You may have seen the hashtag #BoycottOliveGarden trending tonight and, yes, it’s about Donald Trump. This viral tweet has almost 30,000 retweets, and counting:
Olive Garden is funding Trump's re-election in 2020. It would be terrible if you shared this and Olive Garden lost business.
— Dennese Edgerton (@LilleyDennese) August 25, 2019
Except, this isn’t true and Olive Garden is trying to set the record straight:
Hi there, we don’t know where this information came from, but it is incorrect. Our company does not donate to presidential candidates.
— Olive Garden (@olivegarden) August 26, 2019
We can assure you that our company does not donate to federal candidates.
— Olive Garden (@olivegarden) August 26, 2019
Darden does not support federal candidates.
— Olive Garden (@olivegarden) August 26, 2019
If Olive Garden wants to know where it all started, this mega-viral tweet from a few weeks ago that listed a bunch of restaurants as donors to Donald Trump is the likely culprit. 500,000+ retweets, and still up:
So here’s a list of companies supporting Trump’s re-election:
– Bang
– inn n out
– chick fil a
– Taco Bell
– McDonald’s
– Wendy’s
– KFC
– Pizza Hut
– Olive Garden
– Waffle House
– IHOP
– Carl’s Jr.So if you see me starting to get thinner and toned don’t ask me why.
— Costa (@BillyBobSanderz) August 8, 2019
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That text was then copy-and-pasted by other accounts, like this one supporting Bernie Sanders:
Some of the companies supporting Trump’s re-election:
– Bang
– @INNnOutBurger
– @ChickfilA
– @tacobell
– @McDonalds
– @Wendys
– @kfc
– @pizzahut
– @olivegarden
– @WaffleHouse
– @IHOP
– @CarlsJr— People for Bernie (@People4Bernie) August 9, 2019
Black Entertainment Television wrote up that thread as an article as well:
The 2020 presidential race has kicked off, and as candidates fight to see who will make it on the final ticket, money starts to flood in to support their campaign efforts. We compiled a list in 2016 of all the companies that gave money to Donald Trump’s campaign and essentially helped elect him by funding his entire campaign, and we’ve got you again this time around.
Chrissy Teigen, other celebrities and social media users are bringing awareness to and calling for the cancellation of companies that support Donald Trump and his campaign efforts. Whether it be through donations or fundraising events, some heavy hitters, and even entry level employees, from major corporations that affect our day-to-day lives are showing their support for Trump’s 2020 re-election.
And it was already debunked by the Washington Post:
Perhaps you saw that viral tweet about the fast-food chains that are backing Trump.
It's almost entirely wrong. https://t.co/OvOYujH537
— Philip Bump (@pbump) August 9, 2019
From the Post:
Responding to questions, he tweeted a half-dozen links which he said served as sources for his data. Several of those links aren’t articulations of political spending at all; instead, they’re assessments of the politics of the company broadly.
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