In the days after Merck chairman and executive officer Kenneth Frazier made national headlines for being the first to step down from one of President Donald Trump’s advisory councils in the wake of a deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year, the former Drinker Biddle & Reath attorney received numerous “off-the-record” calls from prominent business leaders and politicians expressing their support.

“One of the most powerful Republican leaders in Congress phoned me to say, in the strictest of confidence, how much he admired what he called my ‘courageous and principled stand,’” Frazier told a crowd of about 500 lawyers at the Philadelphia Bar Association on Wednesday. “After he hung up though it struck me how those who would tear apart the ties that bind us now feel empowered to speak out strongly while some who would seek to heal our divisions fear being seen as weak.”