Today, popular department chain Macy’s announced that it is pulling Donald Trump’s line of menswear from its stores. Progressive activists renewed pressure on the company to adopt a more “inclusive” image following comments Trump made about immigrants.
Trump instigated a mass freakout last Sunday during an appearance on State of the Union with Jake Tapper. After repeating his desire to finally finish a southern border fence, Trump stumbled over a politically correct tripwire:
“I like Mexico. I love the Mexican people. I do business with the Mexican people, but you have people coming through the border that are from all over. And they’re bad. They’re really bad,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper.”You have people coming in, and I’m not just saying Mexicans, I’m talking about people that are from all over that are killers and rapists and they’re coming into this country,” he maintained.
Reaction was swift. Univision dropped the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants (Trump is suing for breach of contract.) NBC Universal also cut ties. A petition posted to MoveOn.org demanding the mogul’s head fielded hundreds of thousands of signatures, prompting Macy’s to end its silence on the issue and cave.
More from Time:
“Macy’s is a company that stands for diversity and inclusion,” the department store said. “We are disappointed and distressed by recent remarks about immigrants from Mexico,” Macy’s added, decrying Trump’s depiction of Mexicans, Mexican Americans and Latinos, “who have made so many valuable contributions to the success of our nation.”…In a statement obtained by PBS, Trump said it was he who had ended the Macy’s relationship, and that in any case, he was uncomfortable with the fact that his line there was made in China.“Clearly, NBC and Macy’s support illegal immigration,” The Donald said. “Both Macy’s and NBC totally caved at the first sight of potential difficulty with special interest groups.”
It’s also worth mentioning that Macy’s latest marketing strategy involves a push to the Latino community. But, irrelevant, right?
Anyone else exhausted yet?
Of course, the bigger issue here isn’t whether or not we agree with Trump’s phrasing, or motivations, or politics; the issue is whether or not we’re willing to help perpetuate power of mob rule when it comes to private enterprise.
If I were Trump, I wouldn’t have used those words. I don’t like that he used those words; but what I like even less is the idea that we’ve become a society that caves at the hint of opposition. I recently wrote that eventually, radical leftist and progressive candidates won’t even need policy positions to fuel their campaigns because all activists need these days is a cause not to discuss, but to shut down debate over.
The scandal isn’t in the issue; the scandal, for leftists, is that we’re even having a debate over immigration/gay marriage/gun rights/women’s rights/issue of the week. The actions of Macy’s, NBC Universal, and other companies that bow so easily to the whims of the mob have reinforced that mentality.
Donald Trump has taken second place in polls in both New Hampshire and Iowa. He’s riding a new candidate bump, to be sure, but I have another theory that I’m working with on why Trump isn’t scraping the bottom of the barrel: people may not like his policies, or his attitude, but for all his faults, they like that he says the things that Americans are apparently no longer allowed to say.
Could it be that the next great battle we’re facing is over one’s right to be a jerk and not lose your scalp for it? This move won’t affect Trump’s ability to earn a livelihood or feed his family, but next time, it won’t be Trump. It’ll be Joe Businessowner from Peoria, Illinois, who made a comment about gay marriage in front of an unfortunately placed cell phone camera—and he’ll be finished.
Maybe conservative support for Trump is a signal that we have, finally, had enough.
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