Tonight, there is a pile of meat sitting next to the stage from which Donald Trump will address his supporters following the Republican primaries. The exact provenance and purpose of the steaks is unclear at this time, although Trump aides are telling reporters that they are Trump Steaks.
The businessman brought Trump Steaks into existence in 2007, offering prime Angus beef served in a deluxe “presentation box.” The meat was sold through the Sharper Image catalog, and featured Mr. Trump smiling as he pointed at a plate of grilled steaks. “Trump Steaks are the world’s greatest steaks, and I mean that in every sense of the word,” Mr. Trump said in a promotional video at the time. The product was eventually discontinued, but Sharper Image continues to feature it online as a “flashback” to earlier times.
Here is that (extremely good) promotional video:
Recently, Death and Taxes compiled some reviews Trump Steaks from QVC.com, which found them to be “dreadful pieces of meat” with “no redeeming qualities.” Probably this is why Tuesday’s press conference will also feature red and white wines from Trump Winery, as well as Trump Water.
The mind recoils at the thought of what Trump may have in store.
The Associated Press has projected Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic primary in Mississippi. According to exit polls, Clinton won nearly 9 out of 10 black voters.
On the Democratic side, including super delegates, Clinton has accumulated 1,134 delegates and Bernie Sanders 502 of the needed 2,383. The Republican primary in Mississippi is still too close to call.
Mississippi is Trump’s 13th win in the primary season. However, because the state distributes its delegates proportionally, a close victory will not do much to widen the gap between the frontrunner and his remaining rivals.
The victory demonstrated that Mr. Trump’s message resonates in the industrial Midwest. With his populist campaign and promises to bring back jobs that have gone overseas, the Manhattan businessman held strong appeal for working-class voters in Michigan.
Polls showed Mr. Trump entering the day with a wide lead in the Wolverine State; he fended off a late challenge from Gov. John Kasich of Ohio.
Former Yankees outfielder Paul O’Neill showed up at the press conference turned Home Shopping Network program that Donald Trump, a short-fingered megalomaniac, held in Florida tonight, and even got a shoutout during Trump’s speech. John Kasich will be torn up about not getting his fellow Ohioan’s support, I’m sure.
The race is still too close to call for Hillary or Bernie in the Michigan Democratic primary, where Donald Trump earlier tonight cruised to an easy win.
According to the major networks, Bernie is currently in the lead with less than 60 percent of precincts reporting, though that lead has been slipping as more results come in. Still, it’s a disappointing non-result for Hillary, who was expected to take a significant lead in the state.
Even so, it won’t do much on its own to diminish Hillary’s 217-delegate lead—Michigan’s 130 delegates will be divided proportionately between the candidates.
Despite winning both Mississippi and Michigan early in the night, Trump spent a good six minutes elucidating how business ventures that would look like embarrassing failures to anyone with even a remote sense of shame are actually shining successes.
It’s almost dizzying to watch someone put this much spin on something.
On Tuesday, CNN reports, the suspect in the shooting of an Idaho pastor who appeared with Ted Cruz over the weekend was taken into custody outside the White House. Apparently, he had thrown “suspicious objects” over the south fence.
The pastor, Tim Remington, is expected to survive what police have called “a preplanned attack.” Kyle Andrew Odom was named as a suspect on Sunday.
“I will tell you that some details surrounding Mr. Odom’s planning are disturbing,” Coeur d’Alene Police Department Chief Lee White said, but a motive has not yet been identified.
Donald Trump took time out of his hour-long QVC segment Tuesday to mock an NBC reporter who asked what parents should tell their kids about the language he uses.
Trump—who’s used the word “pussy” to describe Ted Cruz, discussed his penis size on live TV, and confirmed he would sleep with his daughter if they weren’t related—had this to say:
Oh, you’re so politically correct. You’re so beautiful. Oh, look at you. Awwww. Aw, he’s so. Oh, I know. You’ve never heard a little bad, a little off, language. I know, you’re so perfect. Aren’t you perfect. Aren’t you just a perfect young man. Give me a break. You know what? It’s stuff like that that people in this country are tired of. It’s stuff like that.
It would be a step up for Alexander though—last time Trump didn’t even let him get the question out.
In a characteristically rambling speech on Tuesday, Donald Trump accused Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz of coordinating with the super PACs supporting their candidacies: “They talk to their super PACs. They’re not supposed to, but that’s the way life works.”
The implication here is that the two senators have breached the Federal Election Commission’s rules governing coordination between campaigns and super PACs. But it’s not so clear exactly what would constitute such a breach. From the Sunlight Foundation, in 2012:
Although a candidate cannot coordinate expenditures with a super PAC (tell the PAC where an ad might be placed, whether the ad should be positive or negative, or what voters canvassers should contact), there’s no law that says a candidate can’t have connections with a the entities backing his or her election. Many super PACs [...] are run by former top aides of the candidates. And candidates can headline fundraisers for the super PACs that are supporting them [...] so long as they don’t ask for donations beyond the legal limits permitted for their own campaign committees. Donors are free to write larger checks and super PAC staffers are free to ask for them, but as long as the candidate abides by federal campaign limits or doesn’t actually ask for funds. It’s all kosher. Bottom line: There’s a legal prohibition against candidates’ coordinating with super PACs but the FEC has been exceedingly lenient in defining what constitutions coordination, as University of California law professor Rick Hasen pithily outlines in his Election Law Blog.
In this election cycle, as The Huffington Post reported in December, candidates have found ever more ingenious ways to push the boundaries of what constitutes compliance, often in order to share information and multimedia with the PACs:
Two groups back Rubio’s candidacy: Conservative Solutions PAC, a super PAC, and Conservative Solutions Project, a nonprofit group that does not disclose its donors. Conservative Solutions PAC advertisements contain footage of Rubio on the campaign trail shaking hands with workers and giving a stump speech that could only have been filmed by his campaign.
How does a super PAC get access to this footage? Candidates believe they can share information with super PACs or other outside groups if that information is relayed in a public setting.
In September, for example, Rubio’s campaign uploaded more than five minutes of b-roll footage — snippets of film of the candidate with filler music playing — to its Vimeo account. The practice of uploading b-roll footage for super PACs to “find” was widespread in the 2014 elections among congressional campaigns.
Buzzfeed noticed that Cruz’s Senate campaign uploaded hours of footage to YouTube showing the Texas senator talking alongside his wife, father, mother and other family members. All of this is now available for outside groups to use if they need feel-good footage of Cruz with his family.
Campaigns and super PACs are also known to communicate through the unwitting press. From HuffPo:
The Cruz campaign did precisely this when anonymous Cruz advisors told Politico they were dismayed by the lack of advertising from the quartet of super PACs created to support him.
“I assume they’re waiting so their media buyers make the highest commission,” a Cruz advisor told Politico.
The strategically placed complaint apparently came about because one pro-Cruz super PAC worried about coordinating with the campaign. According to CNN, Keep the Promise I super PAC was planning a series of biographical advertising spots in South Carolina using the b-roll from Cruz’ Senate account — until lawyers stepped in to say that using the footage could run afoul of the coordination statutes.
One of the Cruz super PACs, Keep the Promise III, heard the call. The group made a tiny ad buy of $3,700 for 14 spots on the local CBS station in Davenport, Iowa, from Nov. 16-25.
All of which is to say that Trump isn’t making it up when he says, “They talk to their super PACs.” It’s not like Marco Rubio is picking up the phone and asking people to place attack ads...but the message gets through just the same.
After a very close race, Bernie Sanders has pulled out his biggest win yet in what continues to be an unexpectedly difficult primary season for Hillary Clinton, who had led in the polls in Michigan before Tuesday.
“I want to thank the people of Michigan who repudiated the polls which had us down 20-25 points and repudiated the pundits who said Bernie Sanders wasn’t going anywhere,” Sanders said at a press conference in Miami.
“What tonight means it that the Bernie Sanders campaign, the people’s revolution that we are talking about, is strong in every part of the country and frankly we believe that our strongest areas are yet to happen.”
According to the Guardian, not only did Sanders’ opposition to free trade deals resonate with white, working-class voters in Michigan (as it has elsewhere), there were also signs that he had begun to reach African American voters:
While Sanders had struggled in the south to get above 15% of the vote with black people, exit polls in Michigan showed the Vermont senator winning 30% of the African American vote. In an electorate that was a quarter African American, the improvement in Sanders’ margin was enough to make the race unexpectedly competitive for him.
“Tonight’s win in Michigan is simply massive. A thousand pundits declared Bernie’s campaign dead this week. They’ve been singing the same tune since before the campaign began,” Dan Cantor, national director of the Working Families Party, said in a statement.
“The beltway elite may never have really understood why job-killing trade deals are such a big deal. But the people of Michigan surely do, and Bernie Sanders does too. And it turns out, voters appreciate a candidate who really tells the truth.”
Sanders will likely continue to criticize Clinton over free trade ahead of the upcoming primaries in Ohio and Illinois, the New York Times reports, which share similar electorates to Michigan. The former secretary of state maintains a significant delegate lead.
A specific genre of news story that has emerged during this wonderful time on earth is “[place of business] refuses to [render good and/or service] for gay wedding.” You may remember the bakery in Oregon or the bakery in Colorado or the pizzeria in Indiana. This morning, after a 39-hour filibuster, the Missouri Senate tentatively passed a bill that would make the state ground zero for all further instances of boutique shops choosing not to do business with gay people.
The measure would amend the Missouri Constitution to prohibit the government from punishing individuals and businesses that refuse on religious grounds to provide goods or services for marriage ceremonies or celebrations of same-sex couples.
That could include coverage for florists or bakers, who in other states have faced legal challenges for declining to provide services for same-sex weddings.
Per the Star’s Jason Hancock, the measure passed 23-9; another statehouse reporter had it at 21-11, but that’s rather irrelevant either way. Per the rules of the legislature, the bill will have to make it through another vote in the Senate before it gets sent down to the House. The Republicans think it will pass easily:
The Democratic minority in the Senate had managed to filibuster the bill for nearly 40 hours before the Republican majority resorted to a little-known provision. Reports the Star:
The maneuver used to cut off debate Wednesday is called “moving the previous question.” With a simple majority vote, a filibuster can be ended and a vote can be forced.
Senate leaders have historically been hesitant to utilize the procedure because it generates lasting bitterness among lawmakers. Last year, for example, GOP leaders used the “previous question” motion on a right-to-work law, and Democrats shut the Senate down and killed all but one remaining bill as retribution.
In any event, if the bill fully passes, the net result will be that Republicans have ensured that Missouri small business owners can choose to make themselves poorer, and anyway, everyone involved still lives in Missouri regardless.
Donald Trump and his tiny hands at a rally in North Carolina (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images, definitely not photoshopped by Gizmodo)
Wired published an embarrassing correction to a story by Jason Tanz about Donald Trump today. Apparently he or his editors had a Chrome extension turned on that changed every mention of “Donald Trump” to “Someone With Tiny Hands.”
But here’s the really funny part: Not only is this not the first time it has happened, there’s still at least one story that hasn’t been corrected.
Correction at 9:58 a.m. on 3/09/2016: Due to an oversight involving a haphazardly-installed Chrome extension during the editing process, the name Donald Trump was erroneously replaced with the phrase “Someone With Tiny Hands” when this story originally published.
Wired hasn’t yet noticed that a story from Monday, titled “Poor Ted Cruz Doesn’t Even Get a Funko Election Figurine” also has every mention of Trump replaced with the phrase “Someone With Tiny Hands.” Emphasis mine.
PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN MERCHANDISE is usually perfunctory at best: T-shirts, buttons, maybe the odd novelty belt buckle. Someone With Tiny Hands has his “Make America Great Again” hats. Bernie Sanders offers “Feel The Bern” mugs. And until recently, Ted Cruz had the nightmare fuel that are the posters of conservative street artist Sabo. But this summer will see another tchotchke to commemorate the indelible 2016 presidential campaign, and it’s fantastic.
Funko, the toy company behind the increasingly popular Pop! vinyl figures, announced Friday that it will release a “Pop The Vote” line featuring three candidates for president: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Someone With Tiny Hands. (It’s also releasing an intentionally revolting Garbage Pail Kids-themed figures named “Donald Dumpty” and “Billary Hillary.”)
And later in the same story:
Once the company knew it wanted to do something around Sanders, the conversation expanded to include other candidates, ultimately adding Clinton and Someone With Tiny Hands. Robben says that doesn’t reflect the company’s stand on politics—“it’s just which candidates we thought are resonating within popular culture”—and isn’t worried about any of the candidates winning the nomination. “Even if Someone With Tiny Hands or Sanders dropped out of the race tomorrow,” he says, “they’re still going to have fans.”
Not only is every mention of Trump replaced with the phrase “Someone With Tiny Hands,” the tags even make it clear that this wasn’t intentional:
Wired tags on a story about Donald Trump (March 7, 2016)
Let this be a lesson to anyone with silly Chrome extensions installed. Especially if you’re using Cloud to Butt. That could turn into a very embarrassing post on your grandma’s Facebook page.
Update 10:52am: It looks like the Trump story from Monday has now been corrected:
Wired correction about a Trump story from March 7, 2016
Update 11:12am: The top photo of this post has been corrected to show the true size of Donald Trump’s hands.
Donald Trump, who phoned in all his scheduled TV appearances yesterday because he reportedly disliked the way he looked, did another round of phone interviews this morning—and why wouldn’t he? All the major networks but CBS are fine with it.
Trump has so far been able to set the terms of his appearances because everything he does is front-page news. Last night, all the networks broadcast, without break, the entirety of his 45-minute speech, which served in large part to plug his mostly-defunct brands. And Trump did take questions, but the reporters in the audience did not have microphones and most of their inquiries were inaudible. This morning Trump continued the streak with phone interviews that aired on CNN, ABC, MSNBC and FOX News.
Which is all fine, in theory. But where Trump sets the terms of his appearances, misunderstandings occur. When Trump is the only person with a microphone, he can mock a reporter for asking a question about his explicit language. When viewers can’t see Trump’s face during an interview, he can claim he didn’t hear the question about the KKK. When there’s no camera in the room, Trump can consult with whoever he wants before responding—a not-unlikely outcome since he allegedly does it even when debate rules explicitly disallow it.
Then again, nothing the media does is going to make any difference anyway when it comes to Trump.
Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski got physical with Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields last night when she tried to ask Trump a question at a press conference in Florida.
According to The Politico, which spoke to a witness on the scene, Fields was “clearly roughed up by the move,” which her boyfriend says on Twitter occurred “when she asked tough q.”
Fields was attempting to ask Trump a question as he exited the press conference. Secret Service was starting to clear a path, when Fields was forcibly grabbed on her arm by Lewandowski, moving her out of the way and nearly bringing her down to the ground, a source who witnessed the situation told POLITICO.
Breitbart, in a statement, confirmed most of the story.
“It’s obviously unacceptable that someone crossed a line and make physical contact with our reporter. What Michelle has told us directly is that someone “grabbed her arm” and while she did not see who it was, Ben Terris of the Washington Post told her that it was Corey Lewandowski. If that’s the case, Corey owes Michelle an immediate apology,” says the statement attributed to Breitbart News CEO and president Larry Solov.
“I’m going to skip your funeral to eat BBQ tacos,” Obama thought to himself while this photo was taken (Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post/Getty Images)
Obama does not give a fuck anymore, according to a White House briefing, and certainly doesn’t care about Nancy Reagan’s funeral. Instead, NBC News reports, he’ll be headed to Texas for the annual horror-confluence of indie music and startup culture known as SXSW.
I cannot think of anything more insulting than someone skipping my funeral to go to SXSW. I don’t expect anyone to attend my funeral, but I would hope for a better excuse than “I’m spending a week or so in Austin, gonna eat some BBQ, maybe check out the Foursquare Party Tent.” And yet that’s Obama’s plan as Nancy Reagan is sent into the great beyond—and really, what does that say about Nancy Reagan?
Having attended, I can say with complete certainty that I would rather go to a generic funeral than make a third trip to SXSW, but would I rather go to this specific funeral, for the astrology-obsessed wife of a historically bad president? Hard to say—I would probably choose neither and just stay home under the covers.
But Barack Obama isn’t worried about appearances. Obama will skip the funeral of someone who faithfully nursed and counseled a guy he probably despised, and yes he will let it be known to the world that he’ll be partying with Shingy instead.
Photo: Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post/Getty Images
Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com. Public PGP key PGP fingerprint: PGP fingerprint: E93A 40D1 FA38 4B2B 1477 C855 3DEA F030 F340 E2C7
Just a few weeks ago, West Virginians passed a law overriding the cruel, barbaric raw milk prohibition that’s plagued the state for years. To mark the occasion, these same dairy-loving lawmakers downed what else but a tall glass of milk—raw and dirty just like god intended. In totally unrelated news, a bunch of West Virginia lawmakers are now suffering from a severe stomach illness.
While some claim that it’s “just a coincidence,” health officials have launched a probe looking into the situation after an anonymous complaint was filed at the state Department of Health and Human Resources.
Delegate Pat McGeehan is one of those claiming that mere poor timing has given his precious, unpasteurized white gold a bad rap. He also just so happens to be the man you see incapacitated and moaning above. From WSAZ:
“There’s definitely...some other colleagues that have similar symptoms that I’ve been experiencing,” McGeehan said....
“[Cadle] caught me in the hallway, offered a cup to me, and you want to try to be a gentleman,” McGeehan said. “I had a small sip and walked away and tossed the rest of it.”
“I highly doubt raw milk had anything to do with it, in my case,” McGeehan said.
McGeehan also asserted that he “doesn’t think it’s any riskier than eating raw oysters or anything like that.” Someone should tell that to the Food and Drug Administration, which claims that “raw milk can harbor dangerous microorganisms that can pose serious health risks to you and your family. According to an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), between 1993 and 2006 more than 1500 people in the United States became sick from drinking raw milk or eating cheese made from raw milk.”
So what does Cadle, the milk mischief-maker, have to say for himself? As he told the Charleston Gazette-Mail, “I might have been breaking the law. Hell, I don’t know. I gave it away.”
Congratulations to the liberty-loving West Virginians on their remarkable milk-related victory. Good luck with all the vomiting.
Last October, five NYPD officers burst into the Brooklyn apartment of John Antoine, 86, and demanded that he drop the kitchen knife he was using to chop onions, then hit him with a stun gun. Antoine hadn’t done anything wrong. He wasn’t even the guy the cops were looking for. According to an NYPD spokesman, the officer who tasered Antoine should be commended for his “intelligent restraint.”
The officers were responding to a call about Antoine’s daughter’s boyfriend, who was reported to be suicidal. That man was 23 years old, information that was given to an NYPD dispatcher but was apparently not passed on to the responding officer. Antoine was charged with harassment after the incident, charges which the Brooklyn District Attorney dismissed this week. Antoine told the local NBC affiliate that the cops also kicked him in the stomach.
When NBC contacted the NYPD for comment on its story about Antoine’s charges being dropped, a department spokesman told them this:
The responding sergeant demonstrated a level of intelligent restraint that is to be commended. The sergeant holstered his firearm, and instead deployed his less-than-lethal conducted-energy device, bringing the threat to its conclusion.
There’s a lot to unpack here. As the attorney and blogger Scott Greenfield points out on his blog Simple Justice, the shock-and-kick routine the officers gave Antoine can only be considered “restrained” when compared to an even more forceful alternative. It’s like the department is patting this sergeant on the back for the achievement of not killing an unarmed octogenarian as he made his soup.
The NYPD said the cops responded in appropriate fashion. A police spokesman commended the sergeant for not shooting Antoine.
Also, in the statement to NBC, the officer is commended for “bringing the threat to its conclusion.” Who is the threat here? The guy who was born during the Hoover administration or the one with the power to electrocute anyone who rubs him the wrong way?
Antoine’s attorney told NBC he plans to file a $5 million lawsuit against the city. Good luck to him.
A significant part of the American news in the past year has featured images of angry protests against racism on college campuses. Don’t tell the college presidents.
[The] proportion of presidents who characterized race relations on their campus as “excellent” went up from 18 to 20 percent in the 2016 survey. The percentage who said “good” grew from 63 to 64 percent. So 84 percent of presidents this year believe race relations on their campus are either excellent or good.
The survey found that presidents did seem to be aware of the frustrations of minority students on other presidents’ campuses.
This year, only 24 percent of the presidents described the state of race relations at colleges nationwide as good, and no one characterized them as excellent.
We stand with these leaders in condemning the racism of other, lesser places.
NASCAR CEO and majority owner Brian France endorsed presidential candidate and half-empty bag of rancid tapioca Donald Trump the other week. But what might seem like good synergy for both France and Trump is an incredibly bad omen for the future of NASCAR.
France gave his perfunctory praise to Trump at an event in Georgia recently, followed by a coterie of NASCAR drivers like Mark Martin and the very sort of people you would expect to endorse Trump:
France is certainly allowed to endorse whomever he wants, as a private citizen—though it is certainly odd to couch this endorsement as one of a “private citizen” when flanked by Trump-supporting NASCAR drivers. But beyond the moral and ethical complications of endorsing Donald Trump, his actions doom NASCAR to a stunted tomorrow.
NASCAR, for all of its aspirations, has always been a provincial sport. Born in the South, raised in the South, and at one point nearly free of its limits of the South, it has always struggled to get to a larger, more national stage. It has always wanted to become something more than an organization where one ignorant nepotism-baby’s opinion carries the day. Indeed, just this past summer, it had to beg fans to please stop flying a flag entirely representative of treasonous racism.
You’d think it would be a time for NASCAR to make a serious push to expand its fanbase, to move beyond the Kabuki theater and token gestures, but you’d be wrong. NASCAR’s “Drive For Diversity” program, introduced in 2004 ostensibly to help minority and women drivers get a leg up into the insular world of NASCAR, is a joke.
The number of American drivers that have not only graduated from the program, but have made it to the Sprint Cup series and have had any real impact, can be counted on one hand. Asian-American graduate of the program Kyle Larson has been reasonably successful, with a few wins under his belt. Fellow program graduate and Cuban-American Aric Almirola has seen success as well, becoming the third Latino to ever win a top-level NASCAR race.
But those other two Latinos were Juan Pablo Montoya, from Colombia, who spent six year in Formula One, and Nelson Piquet, Jr., of Brazil, who spent three years in F1 (owing in no small part to his father, a three-time F1 world champion.)
One, single, solitary Latino, who hasn’t been through the crucible of F1, winning a race at the top level does not exactly make for a varied crowd. Only one black driver, Bubba Wallace, has managed to win a race in NASCAR’s top three levels in the past 50 years. That was in 2013. No woman has ever won a NASCAR race in the top three levels, and only two, Sara Christian and Danica Patrick, have ever finished in the top five. Christian, in 1949, and Patrick, in the second-level Xfinity Series, in 2012.
NASCAR, for what it’s worth, says that this alarming lack of anything other than white men in its top three levels is simply in the interest of “fairness,” as if family connections, money, and yes, race and gender, didn’t play a role in landing drivers at NASCAR’s top levels.
In an interview with ESPN in 2009, NASCAR’s then vice-president of public affairs and multicultural development, explained why the organization pulls the funding plug once drivers try to make it in the top three levels:
“It would be a conflict of interest,” says Marcus Jadotte, NASCAR’s vice president for public affairs, whose department supervises D4D, “for the entity that’s responsible for making and enforcing rules to also support a particular driver at the national touring level.”
So there is no bridge over the enormous gap between the small time and the big time.
“It can’t all be done at the late-model level and then assume that everybody, somehow, can find a couple of million [dollars a year] to run Trucks,” says Morty Buckles, a member of the first D4D class in 2004. “Once you get ready to run Trucks [first level of the major series], you’re on your own.”
We can chalk it up to NASCAR making some bizarre business decision about it, but we’d be lying. The truth is NASCAR doesn’t care.
We can say that NASCAR doesn’t care because, fundamentally, NASCAR is Brian France and the France family. Brian, who bootstrapped his way to the top of NASCAR with nothing but his father who was already the CEO and his grandfather who founded the race series already supporting him, owns enough of NASCAR to maintain complete control over its corporate operations. So when he endorses Trump—a man whose entire political campaign is based not only chaos, but on a regressive desire to make America “great” again, when it was great to white men but to no one else—NASCAR’s intentions have been laid bare.
France has tried to couch his endorsement of Trump—his first public endorsement, ever, of any politician—as a personal one, not a professional one by the entire NASCAR organization. He said in an email to distraught employees that “I have known Donald and his family for many years, and it is through this connection that I offered my support.”
But through his endorsement, all of that outreach, like the Drive For Diversity program, has been exposed as nothing more than lip service. It wasn’t an attempt to bring the joys of the sport to people previously considered unchurched to NASCAR, it has been a naked attempt at trying to spread an image of national credulity on a sport still reserved nearly exclusively to the good old boys.
Which isn’t a sin in and of itself. NASCAR is a business after all, and businesses are obligated to do nothing in this world but to make money. But the second a logical business decision – keeping quiet – collided with a dumbfuck politician and his bigoted ideas, the logical business decision went out the window. Instead of broadening the tent, Brian France chose to deliberately make it smaller with his endorsement.
The business backlash has already been swift, and severe. Marcus Lemonis, the CEO of Camping World, which is the title sponsor of NASCAR’s third-tier Camping World Truck Series, implied to the Daily Beast that NASCAR may have a price to pay in the wake of France’s enthusiasm for Trump:
“You serve at pleasure of your employees and the customers … [Brian] does not have that right to lay the blanket over an entire sport that is funded by people who write big checks to support him … He is crossing the line by using [for his Trump endorsement] the NASCAR backdrop that I spend millions of dollars on.”
And it’s not like this is the first time France is hearing from Lemonis about Trump, either. Lemonis forced NASCAR to move its annual postseason banquet from Trump’s National Doral Miami resort, after Trump smeared Mexicans as “rapists.” At the time, Lemonis called Trump’s ongoing remarks “blatantly racist and bigoted.”
Despite all of that, France still pressed forward with his endorsement of Trump, aligning his race series with Trump’s populist brand of noxious fear-mongering. And thanks to its inability to separate NASCAR the business from the France family, it has failed to develop a full identity as a neutral, responsible, national-minded entity. And it still matters when the lone ignorant nepotist opens his mouth.
In doing so, NASCAR permanently shuts the door to anyone that isn’t a white male from the South. It permanently shuts out anyone who isn’t a white man.
