The company also stated that it has “always wholeheartedly supported both equality and law enforcement and will continue to do so.”
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany claimed later Wednesday that Goodyear’s statement “failed to clarify their policy.”
“What happened is there was an image that was put out that showed that certain speech was acceptable — Black Lives Matter insignia, for instance. But what was not allowed was Blue Lives Matter,” she said. “What was not allowed was MAGA hats. What was clearly targeted was a certain ideology. They have not denied that that image was presented at one of their facilities(.)”
McEnany then claimed that Blue Lives Matter is as much of an equity issue as Black Lives Matter.
Trump’s tweet may also signal an appeal to voters in a key battleground state: The tire company is based in Akron, Ohio.
Trump, who railed against political correctness during his 2016 campaign, is campaigning this year as a warrior against what he says is a left-wing “cancel culture” that seeks to get people punished or banished for supposedly objectionable words or acts.
“One of their political weapons is ‘cancel culture’ — driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and our values, and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America,” Trump said in a July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore.
Trump’s Goodyear tweet is far from the first time he’s called for boycotts, cancellations and firings of people and a wide variety of products and entities.
CNN’s Maegan Vazquez and Daniel Dale contributed to this report.