Trump condemns racist groups

US president Donald Trump has said “racism is evil” as he condemned the KKK, neo-nazis and white supremacists as “criminals and thugs”.

Mr Trump spoke in the White House after meeting US attorney general Jeff Sessions and FBI director Christopher Wray about the racially-charged violence on Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia, which left one woman dead.

The US leader came under fire for his comments on Saturday that “many sides” were to blame for the violence. In those remarks, he did not single out white supremacists or any other hate group, even as senior Republicans and others condemned them by name.

The president yesterday found himself at the centre of a fresh row after lashing out at the chief executive of the nation’s third-largest pharmaceutical company, Merck. Kenneth Frazier had resigned from a federal advisory council, citing the president’s failure to explicitly rebuke white nationalists who marched in Charlottesville.