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  • 2022-01-18 (xsd:date)
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  • ‘One of the Reasons I Drive Right Past Home Depot and Straight to... (en)
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  • ‘One of the Reasons I Drive Right Past Home Depot and Straight to Lowe’s ...’ Claim One of the reasons I drive right past Home Depot and straight to Lowe’s is because while the co-founder of Home Depot funnels millions into Trump, Lowe’s is over here run by a black man who funnels millions into the community and minority-owned businesses! Marvin Ellison is not only the President and CEO of Lowe’s, but he has also been known to strap on a red vest and join the troops on the store floor serving customers. That’s leadership! Rating Decontextualized Like this fact check? Reporting In January 2022, a June 2020 Facebook post purportedly comparing Lowe’s and Home Depot’s chief executive officers continued spreading: One of the reasons I drive right past Home Depot and straight to Lowe’s is because while the co-founder of Home Depot funnels millions into Trump, Lowe’s is over here run by a black man who funnels millions into the community and minority-owned businesses! Marvin Ellison is not only the President and CEO of Lowe’s, but he has also been known to strap on a red vest and join the troops on the store floor serving customers. That’s leadership! A truncated version was shared to Twitter in September 2021: One of the reasons I drive right past Home Depot and straight to Lowe’s is because while the co-founder of Home Depot funnels millions into Trump, Lowe’s is over here run by a black man who funnels millions into the community and minority-owned businesses! Marvin Ellison pic.twitter.com/Uv4fbXTr3w Florida is where wokes go to die... Please enable JavaScript Florida is where wokes go to die — Pabloma Tramp (@PablomaTramp) September 20, 2021 In a nutshell, the post contained a mixture of opinion (the user’s choice, that’s leadership) and verifiable facts. The individual opinions cannot be validated, but many of the details remained checkable. ‘The Co-Founder of Home Depot Funnels Millions into Trump ...’ Former United States President Donald Trump left office in January 2021, but the post was originally published in June 2020. According to HomeDepot.com, the CEO and Chairman of Home Depot is Craig Menear. A page under Home Depot Leadership reads: Craig Menear is chairman and CEO of The Home Depot, the world’s largest home improvement retailer with more than 2,200 stores and 400,000 associates. Under his leadership, the company continues to focus on providing a seamless, interconnected shopping experience that blends the physical and digital worlds – leveraging the convenience of its stores, digital experiences, innovative product offerings and reliable delivery options for Pro and DIY customers. Craig was named CEO and president in November 2014 and chairman in February 2015. In his more than 20 years with the company, he has held roles spanning merchandising, supply chain, store operations, sourcing, marketing and online. Prior to joining The Home Depot, he worked in a variety of roles in mass, home center and specialty retailing. In July 2019, NPR’s Home Depot Responds To Calls For Boycott Over Co-Founder’s Support For Trump reported that Home Depot responded to social media claims that money spent there supported Trump’s bid for re-election: Facing a backlash, Home Depot sought to distance itself from billionaire co-founder Bernie Marcus after he pledged to back President Trump’s bid for re-election in 2020. Calls to boycott the retailer took off this week on social media as news spread that Marcus told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution late [in June 2019] that he plans to support Trump’s bid for another term. If you plan on buying a hammer, wood, or ANY home improvement items from Home Depot, you may as well send donations DIRECTLY to trump’s 2020 campaign, read one tweet under the hashtag #BoycottHomeDepot. Home Depot spokeswoman Margaret Smith said in a statement to NPR that Marcus retired more than a decade ago and is not speaking on behalf of the company. In fact, as a standard practice, the company does not endorse Presidential candidates, she said. Smith’s statement matched public information about Home Depot’s leadership — Menear became Home Depot’s chief executive in 2014. Co-founder Bernie Marcus was not in charge of Home Depot at the time Trump first ran for office, and had indeed been long retired by the time his statements about Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign drew viral attention in 2019. NPR cited a June 2019 Atlanta Journal Constitution profile of Marcus, Atlanta billionaire plans to give almost all of it away: [Bernie Marcus] also has been a major political donor. According to OpenSecrets.org, he was a top contributor to Donald Trump during his presidential run. And Marcus told the AJC that he plans to support the president’s re-election bid. While Trump sucks at communication, Marcus said, the president deserves praise for boosting U.S. jobs, confronting China on trade and taking action against Iranian and North Korean aggression. Marcus said his political giving remains far smaller than what he gives to philanthropic causes and what he plans to give in the future. After he dies, 80 to 90 percent of whatever is left of his wealth will go to his foundation, which in turn will give to philanthropic causes, he said. Following the January 6 2021 Capitol insurrection, another Home Depot co-founder denounced the attack: Home Depot Cofounder Ken Langone Says He Feels ‘Betrayed’ By Trump Following The Capitol Hill Riot Ken Langone, one of Home Depot’s three billionaire cofounders and a major Republican donor, said he feels betrayed by President Trump because he denied the presidential election results, and that led to a violent insurrection in the U.S. Capitol [in January 2021]. Last Wednesday [January 6 2021] was a disgrace and should never have happened in this country, and if it doesn’t break every American’s heart, something’s wrong , Langone told CNBC [in January 2021] morning. It breaks my heart. I didn’t sign up for that. As Congress gets ready to vote on impeaching Trump for a second time, the 85-year-old investor added that any effort to rationalize the violence and the president’s actions would be a big mistake. He didn’t explicitly say whether he thinks Trump should be impeached, however. Going through the court system to try and get some results, [Trump] exhausted everything. It was over. Biden is the president, Biden should be in the White House , he said. I’m going to do everything I can from Day One to make sure I do my part to make Joe Biden the most successful president in the history of this country, he added, emphasizing the devastating effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the country’s economy as well as the state of the public education system and infrastructure. As was often the case, boycott efforts centered around the political activities of a founder or founders who had since retired from Home Depot. ‘Lowe’s Is Over Here Run by a Black Man Who Funnels Millions into the Community and Minority-Owned Businesses ...’ In the post, Lowe’s CEO was identified as Marvin Ellison; Ellison was indeed chief executive officer of Lowe’s as of July 2018 . The posts’ claim that Lowe’s was run by a Black man (Ellison) were accurate. As for the philanthropy portion, a May 2020 CNBC profile of Ellison (Lowe’s funds $25 million in grants to help minority businesses reopen; CEO challenges other executives to ‘do our part’) began : Lowe’s announced [in May 2020] that it would assist minority-owned businesses with $25 million in grants to support efforts to relaunch the American economy. Lowe’s is dishing out the funds to help small businesses, especially home improvement professionals, in need of masks, personal protective equipment and other supplies to operate safely. The new funds follow $340 million of support the home improvement retailer provided for Covid-19 response activities in the first quarter [of 2020]. These are going to be minority businesses and other businesses that are now starting to reopen, CEO Marvin Ellison told CNBC’s Jim Cramer in a Mad Money interview. So we just want to continue to not only run a good business but also be a great corporate citizen in all of the communities that we operate in. As for the individual political leanings of Home Depot and Lowe’s, a 2020 Insider.com piece — Liberal shoppers are hammering Home Depot’s conservative roots, but the political reality of the home improvement big boxes is far more complicated — reported: Home Depot founders and Republican mega-donors Ken Langone and Bernie Marcus have attracted controversy over their donations to Republican groups and politicians, including US President Donald Trump. But is Home Depot really a conservative company? And is Lowe’s its liberal counterpart? To find out, Business Insider analyzed Federal Election Commission data for Home Depot and Lowe’s executives, as well as data from the Center for Responsive Politics. The numbers show that home improvement retailers have set up PACs that have predominantly donated to Republican federal candidates, like most large retailers. [...] But the recurring partisan controversy fails to capture the fact that both home improvement companies skew conservative when it comes to political giving — a tendency they share with many major retailers . While Lowe’s lacks a set of high-profile, long-retired Republican mega-donor founders to match those at Home Depot, differences between the two companies’ political contribution strategies are thinner that a skim coating of paint . When it comes to big-name, hyper-partisan donors, Home Depot largely has Lowe’s beat. Despite being the older company, the original movers-and-shakers of Lowe’s never achieved the same high-profile or politicized status in the business world as their orange-aproned counterparts. The founding team at Home Depot longtime home improvement executives Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, investor Ken Langone, and merchandising expert Pat Farrah. That in-depth look at the political activity of the companies themselves (versus founders and CEOs) included a specific breakdown regarding Lowe’s political donations: So far in 2020, Lowe’s’ PAC has given a total of $540,500 to politicians, with a breakdown of 30% in contributions to Democratic candidates and 70% in giving to Republican contenders. In 2020, the breakdown for Lowe’s’ PAC’s $602,000 was 25% to Democrats and 75% to Republicans. In 2016, the organization gave only 13% of its $448,750 expenditure to Democrats. Despite Langone and Marcus’ high-profile conservative giving, Home Depot’s PAC has consistently been more Democrat-friendly than that of its rival. While Home Depot’s PAC favors Republicans, the partisan balance of its giving has grown more even with each year. In 2020, Home Depot has spent $1,495,000, giving 44% of that money Democratic politicians and 56% to Republicans. In 2018, 36% of its $2,060,500 contribution went to Democrats, while in 2016 Democrats received 30% of an overall contribution of $1,977,250. Summary A very widely shared Facebook post claimed that while the co-founder of Home Depot funnels millions into Trump, Lowe’s is over here run by a black man who funnels millions into the community and minority-owned businesses. Variations on this claim have circulated for years, but Marcus and Langone were no longer at the helm of the company. It was true that Ellison is Black, and that he helped fund minority-owned businesses (specifically during the hardships of 2020). It would be remiss not to mention Insider.com’s analysis of Home Depot and Lowe’s direct political activity, namely that Lowe’s seemed to favor Republican candidates in its disbursements. Because of all of this, we have given the overall claim a rating of Decontextualized . Posted in Fact Checks , Viral Content Tagged decontextualized , home depot , home depot boycott , home depot vs lowes , lowes CEO , viral facebook posts , viral tweets (en)
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