Merck CEO pulls out of Trump panel, demands rejection of bigotry
Charlottesville — Merck’s CEO resigned on Monday from a business panel led by Donald Trump, citing a need for leadership countering bigotry in a strong rebuke to the US president over his response to a violent white nationalist rally in Virginia. The departure of Kenneth Frazier from the president’s American Manufacturing Council added to a storm of criticism of Trump over his handling of Saturday’s violence in Charlottesville, in which a woman was killed when a man drove his car into a group of counter-protesters. Democrats and Republicans have attacked the Republican president for waiting too long to address the violence, and for saying "many sides" were involved rather than explicitly condemning white-supremacist marchers widely seen as sparking the incident. A 20-year-old man, said to have harboured Nazi sympathies as a teenager, was due in court on Monday to face charges he plowed his car into protesters opposing the white nationalists, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 peo...
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