Stephen Miller:
For years, the perpetually outraged social justice warriors on the left, backed by a super-cool “woke” president, have used their influence in media to urge boycotts and intimidate businesses—or, in some cases, individual employees of those businesses—simply for expressing the “wrong” political view.
Brendan Eich was forced to resign as CEO of Mozilla after angsty liberals learned he had donated to money (years before) to a group opposing same-sex marriage in California. Other targets include big corporations such as Chick-fil-A, whose owner promotes socially conservatives views, and Whole Foods, after the CEO criticized Obamacare.
They’ve also gone after small, family businesses like Memories Pizza in Indiana, after a local reporter asked the Christian owners if they would (hypothetically) cater a gay wedding, and they said no.
The outrage mob’s target-of-the-day is L.L. Bean, after it was revealed Linda Bean, granddaughter of the founder and a member of the company’s board of directors, donated money to a PAC supporting Donald Trump for President.
The anti-Trump group Grab Your Wallet called for a boycott of L.L. Bean stores, even though the company itself has offered no political position on Trump or anything else for that matter really. This is how it usually starts.
Suddenly, however, the left finds itself somewhat outmatched and ill-equipped, because now they are up against the most powerful pushback tool they’ve ever faced: Donald Trump’s Twitter account.
Trump took to Twitter on Thursday to announce his support for Linda Bean. “Thank you to Linda Bean of L.L.Bean for your great support and courage. People will support you even more now. Buy L.L.Bean,” he wrote.
The Twitter handle Trump tagged — @LBPerfectMaine — was linked to a lobster restaurant owned by Linda Bean. You can bet a handful of left-wing websites are trying to figure out where the restaurant stands on gay marriage.
Trump is a master at branding. It’s one of the few things he’s managed successfully over the decades. His product launches fail, but the name and the branding carry on, and it carried him to the White House. Republicans in the primaries had no idea how to counter it. Hillary Clinton had no idea how to stop it. Trump knows he can tweet out support of a company, or insult them, and cause their brand to rise in prominence, their stocks to fall in value.
This is what the cultural left now has to account for if they insist on waging political warfare against individuals and companies who associate with Trump in any way. It’s not a fight they are prepared for. No one can out-troll the Donald.
Trump is training the media. If they propagate in lies, he will publicly call them out. So, you don’t want to be publicly pointed out as “fake news”? Don’t traffic in fake news.
Likewise, if you don’t want to be the subject of Trump’s tweets, don’t think you can intimidate him. Likewise, if you don’t want him effectively rallying support for someone you wish would suffer? Don’t initiate an unfair attack on their rights because they support Trump.
The left has reveled at their capability to mete out punishment to anyone that expresses an opinion that contradicts what THEY want people to believe. Now they have met an opponent that is just as good, or better, at it than they.
@Bill… Deplorable Me: I believe that most Americans still believe in fair play. I think that in situations where they did not support fair play the situation was purposely distorted to obscure what the fair play situation was. Many people do not like Trump, but they do like that he is combating the unfairness of the liberals.