Buzzfeed has joined HP, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft in severing financial ties to this summer’s Republican National Convention over Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric.
In an email to staff on Monday, BuzzFeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti explained that in April, the RNC and BuzzFeed signed an agreement to “spend a significant amount on political advertisements slated to run during the Fall election cycle.” But since Trump became the nominee his campaign has proven themselves to be “directly opposed to the freedoms of our employees in the United States,” because of proposed bans on Muslim immigration and comments about descendants of immigrants, among other policies.
“We don’t need to and do not expect to agree with the positions or values of all our advertisers. And as you know, there is a wall between our business and editorial operations. This decision to cancel this ad buy will have no influence on our continuing coverage of the campaign,” Peretti said in the memo, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO.
“We certainly don’t like to turn away revenue that funds all the important work we do across the company,” Peretti wrote. “However, in some cases we must make business exceptions: we don’t run cigarette ads because they are hazardous to our health, and we won’t accept Trump ads for the exact same reason.”
Ouch.
At the end of May, the New York Times had also confirmed that HP had declined to contribute any cash to the Republican Nativist — er, National — Convention after having been a “generous contributor” to GOP efforts in the past.
Coca-Cola cut it’s donation to the RNC from $660,000 in 2012, to $75,000 this year “and [indicated] that it does not plan to provide more.” As for Microsoft, the company plans to provide only technical assistance to the event, with their cash going to the Democratic convention instead.
Color of Change, a civil rights advocacy group, is continuing pressure on other companies. The group will be aided by the fact that Trump has tripled-down his racist attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the US-born jurist overseeing the lawsuit concerning his “Trump University” scam.
Trump’s racism was costing only him money at first — Macy’s, Univision, NBCUniversal, and Televisa were among the giants to dump Trump after his racist accusations about Mexicans a year ago this month — but now that Republicans have tied themselves to Trump by making him their Presidential nominee, they own the costs too.
That — and the results of Election Day 2016 — is the price you pay for supporting hate.
