As the Bud Light and Target controversies rage on, Republican White House hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy condemned “woke capitalism” on Sunday, refuting a claim by “Shark Tank” billionaire Mark Cuban that going woke is “good for business.”
“My view is that businesses have a purpose – it is to provide products and services to customers who actually need them and yes, to make a profit unapologetically,” Ramaswamy told host Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.”
(Video: Fox News)
As BizPac Review reported, Cuban argued in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that aligning with such progressive causes as those championed by the LGTBQ+ community makes good business sense.
“There is a reason almost all the top ten market cap companies in the U.S. can be considered ‘woke,'” Cuban said. “It’s good business.”
His “Shark Tank” co-star, Kevin O’Leary, begged to differ.
‘Makes no sense’: Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary baffled by Mark Cuban’s claim going woke is ‘good business’ https://t.co/U3sfYswQcH via @BIZPACReview
— BPR based (@DumpstrFireNews) June 15, 2023
“When you’re Disney or you’re a beer company or you’re Target, you have customers of every kind,” he explained during a “Fox & Friends” appearance. “Republicans, Democrats, gender-specific or gender-neutral — it doesn’t matter. You want to sell everybody everything all of the time.”
“When you get involved in partisan issues, you basically lose 50% of your constituency,” O’Leary continued. “Why you would do that when you’re a consumer goods or service company, everybody’s learning, makes absolutely no sense.”
Ramaswamy echoed O’Leary’s sentiments.
“[W]hen those businesses wade into social disputes, not only is that often bad for business – just look at what happened to Bud Light,” he said. “Look at what’s happening to Target.”
As the first Millenial to run for President, Ramaswamy has made the culture wars a central part of his platform. He said woke capitalism needs to take a backseat to “civic pride.”
“What we need is apolitical spaces that bring people together, whether they’re Black or White or Democrat or Republican. The private sector – the sports stadiums of this country, the labs of this country – that’s where Americans unite, regardless of their partisan or identitarian affiliations,” he said. “And so I think woke capitalism is bad for capitalism, but it’s also bad for American democracy.”
America, he said earlier in the segment, is “in the middle of a national identity crisis.”
(Video: YouTube)
“Young Americans across this country are no longer proud to be American,” he explained. “I am. And as the first millennial ever to run for president as a Republican, I think it is part of my responsibility to revive that civic pride in the next generation.”
“And the beautiful thing about America,” he continued, “is that we’re not a country founded on an ethnicity or on a single language or a monarch. We’re a nation founded on a set of ideals that brought together a divided group of people 250 years ago.”
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Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
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