There are serious questions about the propriety of Donald Trump’s attack on Nordstrom because it had decided to drop his daughter’s clothing line. But, not surprisingly, none of them came up during a discussion about Nordstrom’s decision on Fox’s Outnumbered show
The New York Times explains (my emphases added):
Six days after Nordstrom announced that, based on sales, it would no longer carry Ms. Trump’s products — a decision that prompted some Trump supporters to call for a boycott of the stores — the president took to Twitter to complain that “Ivanka has been treated so unfairly” by the company. He first posted the message from his personal account, and then re-sent it from his official White House account.
[…]
"It is a total misuse of presidential power,” said Lawrence M. Noble, the general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center and formerly the top lawyer at the Federal Election Commission. “He is really bringing to bear the whole weight of the office of president on a business decision. Take another company that is considering whether or not to drop her line — they obviously are going to ask themselves if they want to be attacked by the president.”
Business Insider reported that Democratic Senator Bob Casey referred Trump’s tweet to the Office of Government Ethics.
But on Outnumbered, the issue was only whether or not, as the lower-third banner put it, stores were “caving to liberal opposition to the Trump family.” That was a reference to such movements as #GrabYour Wallet.
The show’s #OneLuckyGuy, Brian Kilmeade, suggested that Nordstrom had harmed itself. “You’re cutting off 50% of the country who voted for Donald Trump who are going to be extremely angry,” Kilmeade claimed.
Actually, only about 27% of the country’s eligible voters voted for Trump. But nobody corrected Kilmeade.
Cohost Meghan McCain was surprisingly unsupportive of Trump. She said that he’s controversial and that people have the right to use the free market to voice their opinion. Even if Nordstrom had dropped Ivanka Trump’s line because of political pressure, McCain said, “It is a fair and free way to protest Donald Trump.”
Cohost Sandra Smith said that if Ivanka Trump’s line had been selling well, it would have been very difficult for the store to stop selling it.
But cohost Dagen McDowell accused Nordstrom of being unfair because Ivanka Trump is not the president. McDowell said that if it was anyone else, the store’s move would have been called sexist and racist.
Even Trumpster cohost Harris Faulkner did not buy that. “We have seen her sit in with heads of state,” Faulkner said of Ivanka. “I mean, she is part of the politics of the White House.” Faulkner also noted that Ivanka’s husband is a close adviser to her father.
However, all that was followed up by attacks on Macy’s which also dropped her line. “It’s collapsing in on itself, can we point that out?” McDowell sneered. “Dumping the Trump brand has really helped there.”
Kilmeade reminded the group that Macy’s had decided to “get rid of Donald Trump’s ties” after he made derogatory comments about Mexicans.
McDowell pointed her finger and said with satisfaction, “Business over there stinks.”
Watch it below, from the February 8, 2017 Outnumbered.
I just downloaded the iPhone Boycott Trump app. While I won’t blindly boycott companies on it (e.g., still lists Nordstrom) and a couple are impractical (e.g., I’m under a 2 year mobile contract with AT&T), it’s a great resource for contacting companies associated with neo-fascist Der Furor via your favorite social media or old tech communication method. 🇺🇸
(NEWSER) – Vox has declared a winner in the great Nordstrom-Trump war of 2017, and it isn’t the president. After the retailer announced it was dropping Ivanka Trump’s clothing line due to poor sales, Trump on Wednesday took to Twitter to share his displeasure. After very briefly dipping, Nordstrom’s stock rebounded in a big way. It was up nearly 5% by the end of the day—a day when the rest of the market was “essentially flat,” the Los Angeles Times reports. A financial reporter for the Seattle Times tweeted that Wednesday was Nordstrom’s sixth best day on the market in the past year and ninth best day in the past five years. This despite White House press secretary Sean Spicer calling Nordstrom’s decision to drop Ivanka’s line a “direct attack” on the president, his policies, and his family that is “not acceptable.”