Publix does the right thing: CEO refuses to cave to Parkland anti-gun activist David Hogg’s extortion

In a country where a majority of Americans (outside of California) elected President Donald Trump, it’s difficult to understand why the CEOs of most U.S. corporations bend over backward to Left-wing pressure.

One possible explanation is that CEOs, for the most part, run in social circles dominated by liberals who of course demand singularity of thought and opinion.

But one CEO has bucked the trend of bowing to Marxist extortionist demands in order to ‘make problems go away’ — which never really works but only encourages more Left-wing extortion.

In recent days, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor-turned-blackmailer David Hogg held a “die-in” at a local Publix grocery store near Parkland to ‘protest’ the chain’s donations of some $670,000 to Adam Putnam, a pro-NRA Florida Republican who’s running for governor.

In young Mr. Hogg’s world of Marxist-Leftism, the only people who are ‘allowed’ to participate in the political process are the like-minded; everyone else must be forced into silence or submission because in that world, there is no freedom of thought, freedom of speech, or freedom of expression if those thoughts, words and expressions don’t match progressive positions exactly.

Hogg announced the “die-in” — in which several students and their adult sheep supporters physically laid on the floor of the store making shopping difficult — via Twitter, where he went on to demand that Publix use its monetary expression of speech in a manner of his choosing: The student fund at his high school. Oh, and the price was $1 million. (Related: Shoppers step over bodies at Hogg-led Publix protests.)

That was too much for Publix CEO Todd Jones.

As The National Sentinel reports:

Jones has now told the father of a Parkland, Florida student who was killed in the Feb. 14 shootings the chain won’t be extorted — by Hogg or by anyone else.

Initially the plan was for Jones to make the donation on behalf of the food chain and then go to the Parkland, Fla., school to ‘meet with victims and their families’ — no doubt so he could be lectured and lambasted by an angry mob for daring to support a political candidate of his/the chain’s choice. 

Too politicized

After stepping back and taking a 30,000-foot look at was had happened and what was developing, Jones had a change of heart.

The father, Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime Guttenberg, was killed in the Feb. 14 attack, was angry about Todd’s decision to renege on the payment and the face-to-face with families and victims. 

He detailed on Twitter phone calls he says he had with Jones and how the CEO told him this week that the die-in had so politicized the situation the chain wouldn’t be making the donation.

In one tweet series he wrote of Jones, “He had the gall to say to me that because the die in made this so political that he would not be able to come down here to meet with the Parkland kids and families, as a reminder we are customers, and that Publix would not be making any donation to the victims fund. That is the right of Publix to make a decision like that, but I also have the right to call it out. To be clear, this became political because of the donation to Putnam and the lack of response from Publix until there was an outcry. The victims in Parkland did not make this political.”

‘The gall?’ The fact is, what happened at that school was massively politicized by Left-wing anti-gun opportunists before the dead were even buried.

Todd is doing what CEOs of other corporations should do — he refuses to be bullied and extorted.

Good. If more CEOs would take that stance, there’d be a lot less Left-wing bullying and a lot more freedom of speech and diversity of thought, which is as it should be.

Read more about Left-wing bullying and extortion by David Hogg at HoggWatch.com.

J.D. Heyes is editor of The National Sentinel and a senior writer for Natural News and News Target.

Sources include:

TheNationalSentinel.com

TheGatewayPundit.com