Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Friday he has no reason to think that National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn will resign from his post in the administration, despite admitting in an interview Friday that he has faced tremendous pressure to do so.
“Gary and I have known each other for 20 years. [He] is committed to being here and couldn’t be more excited about that,” Mnuchin told reporters during a White House briefing.
Mnuchin said he and Cohn, who remains close to the president and was previously rumored to be under consideration for chief of staff, have been in touch “every day about tax reform” and are working closely with congressional Republicans to devise a tax bill that can make it to the president’s desk by the end of the year.
Cohn told the Financial Times in an interview published Friday that he came “under enormous pressure both to resign and to remain in my current position” after Trump didn’t immediately condemn the white supremacist, KKK, and neo-Nazi groups that organized the violent rally in Charlottesville earlier this month.
“Citizens standing up for equality and freedom can never be equated with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK,” Cohn said, adding that “this administration can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning these groups and do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities.”
Mnuchin said Friday he never intended to resign and felt the president’s response to Charlottesville was appropriate.
“I think there’s no question that the president was not equating the hate groups with the people who were peacefully [demonstrating], and under no circumstances was I going to resign,” he said.
