Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) responded to the Target boycott over the company’s LGBT clothes for children and said that it will be difficult to sustain, although reports have indicated that the firm has lost some $10 billion in market value so far.
“What really came to bite Bud Light is that wasn’t a hard boycott,” Cruz said during an episode of his podcast. “It’s difficult for nobody on planet Earth if you were going to order a Bud Light to say, ‘I’ll have a Coors Light.’ That’s a very simple substitution.”
“Target? We’ll see how prolonged and easy a substitution it is. There’s Walmart. You know, there are alternatives,” he also remarked. “I will say Targets are located in a lot of areas and very convenient for a lot of shoppers. So we’ll see if this becomes a persistent consequence or not,” Cruz said, adding that in general, “conservatives have typically been not very good at boycotts.”
He pointed to the backlash and boycott of the NFL following the league’s adoption of Black Lives Matter-style slogans and a number of players kneeling for the national anthem, which was popularized by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick years ago. Some also boycotted the NBA for similar reasons.
Because people “really love going to sports events and cheering on their teams,” some of those boycotts didn’t work in the long-term, the Texas Republican said.
There was also a conservative-led boycott of Disney after the company criticized a bill that was backed and signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that prohibited teachers to not instruct on sexual orientation or gender identity in grades kindergarten through the third grade. And meanwhile, DeSantis has been embroiled in a battle with Disney over the governing jurisdiction and special taxing district for the land encompassing Walt Disney World Resort within Orange and Osceola counties.
“You can be annoyed at Disney, but if your kids really want to go to Disney World, that can be hard to say no to. There’re not a lot of alternatives. There’s Six Flags, but Disney World is a pretty unique offering,” Cruz stated. “And for that matter, Disney’s movies. I mean, look, there’s only one Snow White or Cinderella, or Toy Story from Pixar. That is a difficult product for many people to give up permanently.”
