“Unfortunately, the location of the event led to a few sponsors and golfers withdrawing at the last minute due to external pressures,” lamented Jordan Poyer, a professional football player with the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, writing in an Instagram post on Saturday explaining the cancellation of his annual charity golf event. Apparently, the fact that the charity event was to be held at a Trump golf course was unacceptable to progressives — even if they hurt the low-income individuals the charity tournament was created to help.
Poyer’s event, designed to raise money for lower-income individuals to “improve higher education for career success,” was set to take place in July at the Trump National Doral Golf Club in southern Florida, owned by former President Donald Trump.
Poyer expressed disappointment, but said, “Nevertheless, we will persevere.”
The event would have benefited the Educational Credit Management Corporation (ECMC), a nonprofit company that provides support for the administration of the Federal Family Education Loan Program as a student loan guaranty agency. The foundation’s president, Susan Gonzalez, wrote a letter to the Buffalo News expressing her disappointment. “ECMC Foundation was fortunate to be a beneficiary of Jordan Poyer’s golf tournament in Florida.” She added that they have had an “excellent partnership with Jordan and we respect his decision to cancel his tournament; we hope he will consider supporting us in his future events.”
Bluntly put, hatred on the left for Donald Trump is so intense that they are willing to hurt the chances of low-income individuals — the ones they supposedly care so much about — to better their lives through either college or advanced trade schools.
This is not the first time that Trump has been the target of a boycott of one of his golf courses. For example, his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland was passed over for the British Open. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club in Scotland has even said that the tournament will not be played at Turnberry as long as Trump owns it, citing security risks and “potential protests.”
The Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey was scheduled as the venue for the 2022 Professional Golfers Association championship, but the tournament moved its locale to the Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Trump faced no such boycotts until he entered politics, announcing as a Republican candidate for president in 2015. And he is not the only target of these left-wing bullies.
Rather than wage a war of ideas, persuading others of the supposed superiority of their ideology, the Left seems intent on use of such bullying tactics to get their way on a wide range of issues. This includes getting various corporations to support their agenda, even at the cost of reduced profits for shareholders.
Brant Olson, the campaign director of the climate alarmist organization Forecast the Facts, summed up the viewpoint of various progressive groups. “What’s I think more significant is that we have companies now that are seeing that their responsibility doesn’t just end with the bottom line. That there actually is a need to, and that their customers are responding to — companies that stand for something more than profit.”
It is not just the climate issue, of course. Corporations are now in the business of undermining the right of individuals to keep and bear arms, discontinuing the selling of products manufactured by business owners whose political views they do not like (such as the decision of some retailers to drop My Pillow products because owner Mike Lindell is an outspoken conservative), and even firing corporate executives who do not toe the leftist line. For example, Mozilla Firefox CEO Brendan Eich was forced out of his position with the company when it was discovered that he had made a $1,000 donation to California’s 2008 initiative to ban same-sex marriage in that state.
Progressives were even able to bully Chick-fil-A into giving money to Planned Parenthood, and stop giving money to groups opposed to same-sex marriage.
Why are corporations increasingly becoming part of the progressive coalition, previously made up mostly of media, popular culture, and academia? Part of it is fear of being targeted by left-wing-inspired boycotts. Put out merchandise supporting such perversity as transgenderism, as was done by Target, or promoting that same idea through beer commercials (as was attempted by Bud Light), and your company will not become a boycott target.
In many cases, however, it is a simple matter of corporate executives who are themselves left-wingers. This perplexes many who think that corporate executives must be “capitalists,” and supportive of the free-enterprise system. The truth is that many of these executives are not principled supporters of market freedom (or any other kind of freedom). They do not even care all that much about whether their company makes more profits. They certainly could not care less about their shareholders’ bottom line.
In short, they care about themselves. To them, it makes no difference how money enters their pockets, or how they obtain power — just so long as it happens. Industries in communist countries have managers, too — and they certainly are not advocates of free markets.
Finally, they do not “love” the poor or “minorities,” but only see them as useful tools in advancing their own power and their place in the ruling system of the country. If that means scuttling a golf tournament designed to help the poor and minorities, they are fine with it.
