It wouldn’t be fair to say Nike CEO John Donahoe hates America. He just loves China a whole lot more. He declared as much during an earnings call when he told everyone “we are a brand of China and for China” while touting how big they were in the Communist nation.
“We are the largest sport brand there, and we are a brand of China and for China,” Donahoe said. “And the biggest asset we have in China is the consumer equity. Consumers feel a strong, deep connection to the NIKE, Jordan and Converse brands in China. And it’s real.”
The statement came after pressure from Beijing to walk back comments made by Nike Corporate about the Uyghur crisis. The statement was resurfaced as many nations engaged sanctions over kidnapping, torture, and murder by the government in the region. According to Fox Business:
Nike recently came under fire in China for a comment it made raising concerns about forced labor practices in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). It reassured customers that it does not source textiles or products from the region, like cotton.
After the U.S. and other Western countries responded to the forced labor allegations with sanctions, its statement was resurfaced and resulted in calls among Chinese consumers to boycott the brand – as well as others like H&M.
The practices of the Chinese government should make Americans rethink doing business with companies that are beholden to Beijing. It isn’t just the humanitarian crisis that everyone knows about but that the Chinese Communist Party continues to deny. It’s also the fact that when we buy from companies like Nike, we’re perpetuating the type of anti-American sentiment held by people like Donahoe.
Despite the lockdowns, business is booming for Nike who just hit their highest ever stock price on Friday. Much of this can be attributed to the earnings call when Donahue noted how much sales have increased both in China and the United States. According to CNBC:
“In Greater China, sales were up just 17% at $1.93 billion. … Management said Thursday that Nike is seeing improvement in China sequentially month by month,” CNBC reported.
Likewise, the company’s earnings in the U.S. also spiked.
“In North America, Nike’s biggest market, sales more than doubled to a record $5.38 billion as the company surged from a year earlier when the Covid pandemic was hitting the retail industry the hardest. The region’s sales were up 29% on a two-year basis,” according to CNBC.
This is one of dozens of valid reasons for those of us who love America to stop doing business with such “woke companies. Nike bows to China only because they think they have American business locked up. We need to show them otherwise.
YouTube, Spotify, and other Big Tech platforms are taking Freedom First Network down
It’s no secret we speak our minds and bring on guests who do the same. That’s one of the biggest reasons we put together the Freedom First Network in the first place. There are far too many news outlets, including so-called “conservative” media companies, who are so beholden to Big Tech that they temper their perspectives at best and outright coverup the truth at worst. Many, as you all know, will blatantly lie in order to maintain the narrative that supports the radical agenda taking over much of the United States.
We have had our YouTube channel taken down. Many of our shows have been suppressed or removed by Facebook and Twitter. Spotify banned one of our shows completely from their platform. Google hates us. We’ve even been censored by some of the smaller players like Medium, Transistor, and Captivate. But we stand behind our reporting and perspectives and we refuse to bow down to Big Tech tyranny for the sake of pageviews or video plays.
This isn’t the easiest road to travel, especially for a media company that is so new. We launched Freedom First Network in 2020 to fight against the very censorship that we’re seeing so widespread today. We have found great homes for our content on freer speech platforms like Rumble and we’re putting our best efforts forward into building our presence on Locals. Nevertheless, we cannot do it alone. We need help.
One of the things cofounders Jeff Dornik and JD Rucker agreed to from the start was to never be the pawns of companies that do not embrace our worldview. Finding advertisers and affiliates is easy; we receive requests by companies wanting to be pushed on our shows every day. But it’s important to us that we’re promoting companies, services, and products that are beneficial to maintaining a Freedom First stance in America. As a result, we do not take on sponsors easily. We would rather rely on our own products like Freedom First Coffee and the support of our wonderful viewers, listeners, and readers.
Those who want to support us and help keep the fight for America’s future moving forward can do so by donating through our Locals page. There, you can donate monthly or one-time. Some have told us to use Patreon or GoFundMe, but both of those platforms have demonstrated a hatred for free speech. Locals does not. They embrace it. We encourage everyone to join us on Locals, but donations are greatly appreciated as well. We do not have day jobs. Our fight for freedom is a full-time gig.
Please feel free to reach out to us through our contact form. It goes directly to our founders, so if you’re interested in getting involved, investing, sponsoring, or even bringing a show to our network, let us know. May God Bless the United States of America!