Wells Fargo giving pandemic aid to “hurting” small businesses

Just days before Thanksgiving, Wells Fargo is announcing a campaign to aid small businesses and people in need.

Bill Daley, a former White House chief of staff for President Barack Obama who is now vice chairman of public affairs at Wells Fargo, joined “CBS This Morning” on Monday to announce the campaign, called Many Hearts. One Community.

Bill Daley, vice chairman of public affairs at Wells Fargo.

CBS News

“This pandemic, and lots of other things over the last years, has caused enormous pain,” Daley told “CBS This Morning” co-host Tony Dokoupil. “We’re fulfilling our commitment to provide resources to provide 82 million meals to Americans. You’ve reported repeatedly on the challenges that many people have on getting meals for [themselves] and their children, so we’re doing that.”

Meals will be provided by food banks affiliated with Feeding America (go to feedingamerica.org for more information, including how to find your local food bank). “We’re trying to pull together in a tough time,” Daley said.

Well Fargo will also contribute up to $1 million to the Red Cross, “so that people who are out there fighting this and fighting for us around the world know that we appreciate their actions and their sacrifices,” he said.

Daley said the second part of the campaign is to provide frontline workers and American military personnel notes and thanks from our customers [and] employees.

“The third piece of our campaign, to be honest with you, Tony, is to try to help small businesses through these holidays. We’re committing $50 million over the next five weeks to help small businesses, and encouraging our customers and employees to shop at small businesses, because they really are the backbone, and they’re hurting.”

Daley, who served in the Obama-Biden administration and has worked on presidential transitions, was also asked by Dokoupil about President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet picks.

CBS News has already reported that former deputy secretary of State Tony Blinken, a longtime diplomat and a member of Biden’s inner circle, is the president-elect’s choice to head the State Department.

“Tony is a very solid fellow who’s very close to President-elect Biden,” said Daley. “And that’s an enormous advantage for a secretary of state. They have worked together for years. He’s smart, he knows the world. He is not going to be a secretary of state who’s speculating about running for Senate from some state. He’s going to focus on doing the job, which is vitally important to the future of our country. So, I think there’s no one I can think of better for President-elect Biden to pick that Tony Blinken.”

Daley was also asked about prospective Treasury Secretary picks, including former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who rose to prominence in part from her attacks on executives at Wells Fargo and other financial institutions.

Dokoupil asked, “Is there somebody that Wells and your office would like to see in the position of Treasury Secretary?”

“No, I think that would be presumptuous of us,” Daley replied. “Obviously the president-elect will pick who he thinks is talented.

“One speculation about Senator Warren, obviously she feels very strongly about financial issues and she’s been very vocal on them. One of the things politically, it’s difficult to appoint a Democratic senator to a Cabinet spot if there’s a Republican governor who would replace that senator with a Republican. That then shrinks the number of Democrats in the Senate, and that’s a hard political thing to do.

“But whoever the president-elect picks, I’m sure they’re going to be dedicated to keeping our economy strong as we come out of this pandemic, and getting us back to a point where there’s much lower unemployment and less pain for people in America.”