Hobby Lobby faces renewed calls for boycott following display seemingly endorsing Trump

Christian company incited controversy over artifact smuggling in 2017

(Getty Images)

Hobby Lobby is facing renewed backlash for its long history of controversies following a display that appeared to endorse Donald Trump in the 2020 election in one of its stores.

The image, originally posted on Twitter on Sunday, caused a stir on the platform, leading to fresh debate about the morality of the crafting company.

In the photo, which user Kari Brekke claimed was taken in a Hobby Lobby store, three shelves of letters spell out “USA VOTE TRUMP”.  

The photo has not yet been verified, and it is not clear if this was an intentional display auhtorised by the store. Hobby Lobby did not immediately reply to The independent’s request for comment.

However, the image quickly went viral with over 34,000 likes and 13,200 retweets as of Monday, and resurfaced calls for boycotts of the store.

Some argued that the reactions to the display distracted from the more serious decisions of the company.  

“We're all aware that customers re-arrange these letters all the time, right?”, author and YouTuber Hank Green wrote on Twitter.

“Call my old fashioned, but I prefer to be outraged at Hobby Lobby for making it so that employers can decide what kind of healthcare their employees can get.”

The dig referred to a supreme court ruling in 2014 that the Christianchristian company should not be forced to provide employee health care coverage for contraceptives on the basis of religious beliefs.

The craft company also incited controversy in 2017 after it was fined $3m for smuggling thousands of deliberately mislabeled Iraqi artifacts out of the Middle East to be sold in the US, violating a 2004 law banning the import of Iraqi cultural property into the country.

The chain has also more recently faced scutiny after fighting to keep its doors open amidst the coronavirus pandemic and statewide stay-at-home orders, while reportedly refusing sick pay for workers who fall ill, including from Covid-19.