Coverage: Merck CEO drops out of presidential council after Charlottesville

Merck & Co. Chief Executive Kenneth Frazier resigned from President Donald Trump’s American Manufacturing Council on Monday, saying he was taking a stand against intolerance and extremism.

Michael Erman of Reuters had the news:

Trump denounced neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan as criminals and thugs on Monday, bowing to mounting political pressure after initially saying many sides were to blame after a white-nationalist rally turned deadly in Virginia.

Frazier, who is African-American, is the only CEO so far to leave one of Trump’s advisory councils because of his reaction to the violence in Virginia, although the AFL-CIO said it was considering pulling its representative on the committee. Prominent Democrats and Republicans criticized Trump’s response to the violence over the weekend.

The gathering of hundreds of white nationalists took a deadly turn on Saturday when a car plowed into a group of counter-protesters and killed at least one person.

Trump had said “many sides” were involved, drawing fire from across the political spectrum for not specifically denouncing the far right.

Carolyn Y. Johnson and Jena McGregor of The Washington Post reported that Frazier drew Trump’s wrath:

Just a month ago, President Trump invited Merck chief executive Kenneth C. Frazier to the White House, calling him one of the “great, great leaders of business in this country.” On Monday morning, Trump singled out Frazier again, this time to express his displeasure over the pharmaceutical executive’s abrupt decision to resign from the president’s American manufacturing council.

Frazier, citing a “matter of personal conscience,” said he felt “a responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism” in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville and Trump’s failure to quickly and explicitly condemn the white supremacists who organized the rally.

It took Trump just 54 minutes to respond, calling out Frazier among the legions of activists, celebrities and politicians from both parties expressing similar sentiments.

“Now that Ken Frazier of Merck Pharma has resigned from President’s Manufacturing Council, he will have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!” Trump tweeted.

Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times wrote about whether other CEOs would follow suit:

The silence from the larger C.E.O. community about Mr. Trump’s reaction to the situation in Charlottesville has been remarkably conspicuous, even as one of their own has now been attacked online by the president.

By Monday evening, at least one other C.E.O. stepped forward: Kevin Plank, the founder of Under Armour, announced on Twitter that he was resigning from the American Manufacturing Council, saying, among other things, that his company “engages in innovation and sports, not politics.” He did not refer to the president, though.

A few big-name corporate leaders released innocuous statements over the weekend condemning the violence by white supremacists in Charlottesville. But with the exception of Mr. Frazier, none appear to have directly condemned the president’s choice of words, which have been a lightning rod for Americans from many quarters, even among many Republican lawmakers and Trump supporters.

At a news conference on Monday, after a barrage of blistering criticism, the president said that “racism is evil.”

As the day wore on, several executives, including Meg Whitman of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, made statements in support of Mr. Frazier, while others — including Tim Cook of Apple, and the Business Roundtable, which represents some 200 C.E.O.s — condemned the racism on display in Charlottesville.