Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has spent nearly $3,000 at Target since last year despite a number of conservative calls to boycott the company over its LGBTQ+ Pride collection.
Target was at the center of a culture war clash last summer after conservatives vowed to boycott the large retailer over its 2023 Pride collection. Conservatives specifically took issue with a line of swimsuits marketed for their ability to “tuck” genitalia for transgender women and partnering with the brand Abprallen, as a small part of designer Erik Carnell’s merchandise features pentagrams and other satanic imagery, though none of these products were sold in the Target collection.
The brouhaha came amid a broader debate about whether companies should wade into hot-button social issues. Last year also saw large conservative boycotts against Bud Light over its partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, an influencer who rose to prominence by sharing her gender transition on social media.
Despite high-profile conservatives calling for a boycott of Target, the Trump campaign has continued shopping at the retailer in recent months, according to new financial disclosure forms filed on Wednesday.
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The forms reflect the spending of the Trump campaign, not necessarily the former president himself.This sort of spending, notably, is also not unusual for political campaigns.
Trump’s campaign has spent $2,990 at Target since September, according to the new filings with the Federal Election Commission. The bulk of this spending was listed as “office supplies,” though a few noted the spending was on “office equipment” or “office supplies & travel: food.”
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s campaign and Target for comment via email.
While large swaths of conservatives said they planned to boycott the company, Trump has never made any calls for a boycott of Target. In fact, his stance on company boycotts has at times left him at odds with his base of voters.
For example, last month Trump defended Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch as a “Great American Brand” and suggested conservatives give it a “second chance,” igniting rebuke from some of his own supporters. He did, however, praise a book that called “defund leftist woke companies” in May 2023.
Amid the conservative backlash, Target announced in May 2023 that they would no longer sell some items of their Pride collection, citing “threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and wellbeing while at work.”
Target did face some economic challenges amid the boycott. Stock price data shows that its stock prices declined in May and June, shortly after the boycott began. But in the second half of the year, Target’s share price increased by 7.46 percent and has continued to rise in 2024.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.