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Why half-hearted conservative boycotts rarely take root
Philip Bump 33 mins ago
One of the first times that Donald Trump publicly called for a boycott, it was not over a key civil rights or humanitarian issue. It was, instead, about an annoying TV ad.
Get rid of this commercial,” Trump said in a video recorded at Trump Tower in 2011. “I will not have anything to do with Geico as long as that commercial — We ought to boycott Geico.”
The ad in question? A Humphrey Bogart impersonator hawking insurance. Tacky? Sure. Worthy of a boycott, even jokingly? Eh, probably not.
The next year, Trump’s efforts turned more political. He encouraged a boycott of Glenfiddich scotch after the company had the gall to honor as Scotsman of the Year a farmer who had opposed Trump’s efforts to expand a golf course in that country. A few weeks earlier, Trump had endorsed a boycott of Scotland broadly because the country planned to install wind turbines off its coast within sight of Trump’s property.
Over the course of Trump’s time in politics, wobbly little boycotts emerged and faded with regularity. One might argue that Trump is president because of one of those boycotts, if indirectly: When Macy’s and Univision ended business deals with Trump’s company following his anti-immigrant comments at his campaign launch in 2015, Trump demanded that supporters avoid the companies. It probably didn’t do much to affect business, but it elevated Trump’s rhetoric to a national platform and unquestionably helped attract Republican primary voters.
Trump is still playing the game of using demands for boycotts to engage his supporters. On Saturday, he issued one of his Twitter-style news releases to call for boycotts of Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, JPMorgan Chase, ViacomCBS, Citigroup, Cisco, UPS and Merck — all companies that had spoken out about a new law reshaping Georgia’s election system. His boycott call was coupled with standard Trumpian rhetoric about how the 2020 election that he lost was “stolen,” which it wasn’t. He then accused Democrats of trying to “boycott and scare companies into submission,” which is a weird thing to decry 20 words after calling for boycotts of nine companies.
more/NO PAYWALL
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/why-half-hearted-conservative-boycotts-rarely-take-root/ar-BB1fm6Ey?
