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Donald Trump Slammed Nordstrom for Dropping Ivanka Trump's Line

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NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 11: Ivanka Trump walks through the lobby of Trump Tower, November 11, 2016 in New York City. On Friday morning, Trump tweeted that he 'has a busy day in New York' and 'will soon be making some very important decisions on the people who will be running our government.' (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)Getty Images

Less than a week after Nordstrom decided to drop Ivanka Trump's eponymous line, Donald Trump slammed Nordstrom for its "unfair" behavior.

In the Obama era, presidential association with a retailer usually meant a big boost in sales (remember when Michelle Obama hit the world stage wearing off-the-rack J.Crew and broke the Internet?). But in the age of Trump, the president’s politics have sparked a full-on boycott spearheaded by the #GrabYourWallet campaign. Today, he unleashed his Twitter account in defense of his daughter.

“My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person -- always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!” the President tweeted Wednesday.

Over the past week, Ivanka Trump’s eponymous label has been dropped from major retailers, including Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Belk, and ShopStyle—all of which cite poor performance, not politics, as the reason for the decision. “This was a decision made entirely based on brand performance,” a Nordstrom spokeswoman said in a statement last week. “We’ve said all along we make buying decisions based on performance. We’ve got thousands of brands—more than 2,000 offered on the site alone. Reviewing their merit and making edits is part of the regular rhythm of our business.”

White House press secretary Sean Spicer weighed in on the tweet the during his daily briefing on Wednesday. He said that Nordstrom's decision to stop carrying Ivanka Trump's line is an attack on the President's policies and his daughter.


"This is less about his family's business and an attack on his daughter," said Spicer. "He ran for President. He won. He's leading this country. I think for people to take out their concern about his actions or his executive orders on members of his family, he has every right to stand up for his family and applaud their business activities, their success."

Despite the company’s adamancy that the call was not related to Trump’s immigration ban (to which Nordstrom responded by sending a strongly-worded pro-immigration letter to employees), the president chimed in with a tweet that could be seen as either a father sticking up for his daughter, or a president of the United States bullying a public retailer into selling his family’s products.

“[Nordstrom has] probably been looking closely at Ivanka's sales numbers for some time and weighing whether they're worth all the problems she's brought them at the brand level,” Shannon Coulter, co-leader of the #GrabYourWallet boycott movement, told Allure. “The poor sales performance Ivanka's brand is experiencing right now is the result of her own actions.”

Regardless of why the retailer dropped the Trump label, pushing a publicly traded company to bend to the personal feelings of a U.S. president is totally unprecedented. It seems as long as those opposing the administration are grabbing their wallets, Trump will be grabbing his Twitter account.

More on brands dropping Trump products:

  1. Belk Took Down Products From Ivanka Trump’s Label
  2. Neiman Marcus Has Dropped Ivanka Trump’s Jewelry Line
  3. Nordstrom Is Dropping Ivanka Trump's Brand

We shot this before Trump won and here's why we posted it: