Over the weekend, liberals instigated a boycott against the delicious restaurant Olive Garden.
#BoycottOliveGarden was actually a trending hashtag on Twitter as liberals jumped the gun to declare their newfound hatred for the Italian food chain.
“Olive Garden is funding Trump’s re-election in 2020. It would be terrible if you shared this and Olive Garden lost business.” seems to be the tweet that may have kicked off the boycott. Lilley Dennese, who is an English professor, received tens of thousands of retweets from this status.
The tweet was later deleted and so was her account. I imagine she’s trying not to get herself doxxed.
Other users shared their support for the boycott,
“Olive Garden is supporting Trump’s bigotry, climate change denial, deregulation, tax cuts for the top 1%. It’s okay for rich & corporations to get Gov assistance, meanwhile the average worker never had help from the Gov cuz of this corruption. This must stop. #BoycottOliveGarden” @mynameisNegan
https://twitter.com/mynameisNegan/status/1165802830470496256
“Because @olivegarden is a major contributor to the reelection campaign of aspiring dictator @realDonaldTrump I will no longer be patronizing your restaurants. #BoycottOliveGarden” – @MichaelLassell
@olivegarden Because @olivegarden is a major contributor to the reelection campaign of aspiring dictator @realDonaldTrump I will no longer be patronizing your restaurants. #BoycottOliveGarden
— Michael Lassell (@MichaelLassell) August 19, 2019
“Dammit. I love the zuppa toscana and shrimp fritta at @olivegarden. O well. I love democracy more. Goodbye, Olive Garden. #BoycottOliveGarden.” – @AmethystMimosa
https://twitter.com/AmethystMimosa/status/1165728784160440320
Except there was one problem, Olive Garden never donated to President Trump or any other presidential candidate for that matter.
Olive Garden had to act quickly to try and save their name, although it would probably gain business by being a Trump supporter.
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
According to The Daily Wire,
Twitchy looked into where the whole thing got started and traced it back to a viral tweet posted by a college student in early August that listed Olive Garden among several other major chains as supposedly “supporting Trump’s re-election.” That tweet was then promoted online by blue-check People for Bernie and BET, which included the claim in an article.
The original tweet was quickly debunked by The Washington Post‘s Phillip Bump. An excerpt from his fact-check of the college student’s tweet that started it all:
The college student is broadly wrong about those companies. 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. That can be misleading. Chick-fil-A, for example, is well-known as a conservative company, closing on Sundays and earning national visibility after its chief executive disparaged same-sex marriage several years ago.
The student offers a summary of spending compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics as evidence for his claim that the company is backing Trump’s reelection. [includes chart] Three things should jump out at you here. First, this is the 2016 cycle — in other words, data from the last presidential election. Second, it’s all federal candidates, not just Trump. Third, notice that the bar is entirely green. That means these are contributions from individuals, from people who likely work for Chick-fil-A and not from the company itself.