America’s favorite discount store, Walmart, landed in the middle of politically-fueled boycotts Monday when the company began selling Impeach 45 t-shirts. Trump supporters, as you would imagine, were not pleased and the call for a boycott began.
So far, a total of four companies are manufacturing the t-shirts, which echo the expression often uttered by some Democrats. Walmart sells the t-shirts, but it doesn’t manufacture them. Nevertheless:
Old Glory is the company that sells the “Impeach 45” apparel and it’s not the only one. A quick search on Walmart.com revealed three other companies selling Trump impeachment merchandise.
Fortune credits Ryan Fournier, chairman of Students for Trump, with the discovery of the t-shirts for sale and the call for a boycott that followed. Fournier is quite active on Twitter.
The retailer (WMT, +0.98%) is facing calls for a boycott after supporters of President Donald Trump discovered a shirt for sale readying “Impeach 45“.
The shirts, seemingly discovered by the chairman of the group Students for Trump, are one of a number of “Impeach 45” offerings, which range from sweatshirts to baby clothes from a wide variety of manufacturers. The company also sells a wide range of pro-Trump merchandise, including a substantial number of “Make America Great Again” hats.
.@walmart why are you selling Impeach 45 baby clothes on your website?????
What kind of message are you trying to send? https://t.co/PwI4nCVAZx
— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) July 3, 2018
This is not the first time Walmart has gotten into some hot water for a t-shirt offered for sale.
Walmart, not long ago, was in trouble with liberals as well for a shirt it soldthat read “Rope. Tree. Journalist. SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED”
Facing protests, the company quickly pulled the shirt from its site, saying in a statement “As soon as we were alerted to this content promoting violence against journalists we removed the content, added this content to our automated scanning systems, and kicked off a human sweep of the site to find and remove any similar content.”
As I write this, Walmart has not yet commented on the t-shirts being sold online. A quick search of their Twitter account does not show any tweets about it. The continued sale of the clothing items and whether or not a widespread boycott of Walmart catches on has not yet been determined. In the meantime, there are plenty of other sites online to purchase a t-shirt with the same message. Since Walmart also sells pro-Trump clothing items, perhaps these t-shirts will be justified as a fair and balanced approach by the retailer. I doubt it, but I suppose it’s possible.
Addendum (Ed): Or perhaps it’s just another way to profit off of political passion. As a capitalist, I can support offering both sides some sloganeering swag, I guess. All of this will be embarrassments in people’s closets in four to eight years, but separating a fool from his money is a long American tradition.
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