In a speech Monday night in Illinois, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump suggested boycotting Starbucks over its controversial redesign of its Christmas cups.
“Did you read about Starbucks? No more Merry Christmas on Starbucks,” he told a capacity crowd of about 10,000 at a pre-debate rally in Springfield, Illinois.
“Maybe we should boycott Starbucks. I don’t know,” he said. “Seriously, I don’t care.”
In his signature off-the-cuff manner, the real-estate mogul also said that he would cancel Starbucks’ rights to operate a store in one of his buildings, saying “that’s the end of that lease,” while going on to add “but who cares?”
The often-liberal Starbucks chain introduced its annual Christmas-season cups for this year, and prompted criticism over the design — all-red with the company’s green-and-white logo but no snowflakes, winter scenes or Christmas decorations or any other acknowledgment of the reason for the design apart from what’s inherent in the colors green and red.
Religious conservatives have felt increasingly alienated in recent years by the de-Christianizing of public acknowledgments of Christmas generally and from Starbucks specifically as it has become more overt in recent years about its backing of liberal social causes.
Mr. Trump alluded to another element of the issue in Monday’s speech — what to call the season, “Christmas” or “Holidays.”
“If I become president, we’re all going to be saying, ’Merry Christmas’ again. That I can tell you,” he said.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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