Thumbs up: CEOs leaders take a stand — and walk out

Corporate executives are seldom the objects of popular praise. But this thumbs up goes to the heads of Pepsi, General Motors, IBM and others who responded with outrage to the president's lamentable claim that “both sides” were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Their outrage was so great that they planned to step down together in unison from President Donald Trump's prestigious Strategic and Policy Forum, a group that was advising the Trump administration on economic issues. Meanwhile, a similar rebellion was occurring in the president's other business advisory group, the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative, where the chief executive of Merck had stepped down on Monday, joining Tesla's Elon Musk and Disney's Robert Iger, who had resigned in late May after the president announced he was pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord.

By Wednesday, when it was clear that both advisory councils were dissolving from an exodus of members, Trump tweeted that he was disbanding the groups.

Like his son's decision in July to release his emails concerning a 2016 meeting with Russian representatives just before the New York Times broke a story about that meeting, the president's move was merely a face-saving gesture. But it does little to hide the truth that Trump, who once touted his ties to business leaders, has few left. Kudos to these corporate executives for showing they have business ethics - and backbones.