Howard Schultz Brutally Mocked For ‘Empty Chair’ Moment: ‘It Worked So Well For Clint Eastwood’
Former Starbucks CEO and current independent presidential candidate Howard Schultz participated in a Fox News town hall event in Kansas City Thursday evening. And much like everything else that he’s been involved in as he weighs a run at the White House, it was an unmitigated disaster.
At one point in the forum, the moderators asked him if he believed the migrant situation at the southern border represented a crisis, prompting the billionaire to rehash maybe the most infamous moment in presidential convention history.
Pointing to a chair on the stage, Schultz delivered the following monologue:
“It is a crisis but it can be solved. It cannot be solved currently because of the ideology of both parties. But, if I was fortunate enough to become president, this is what I can promise you. I’m about accountability. I’m about results. I would bring the people into the room, I would say you cannot come in here with ideology or ego. What I want to do is I want to put an empty chair in the room and that chair represents the American people. We’re not going to leave the room until we solve the problem for the American people. The problem that we have with both parties, the American people are not in the room. I will tell you who is in the room. Self-interest, ideology, self-preservation, and their ability to get reelected. They spend more time on both sides raising money to get reelected than they do solving of problems. It’s time to change.”
Oof.
As you could imagine, it didn’t take long for Twitter to do its thing, and before long, Schultz was the object of ridicule. And, yes, Clint Eastwood became a trending topic on the social media site.
He is literally spending millions of dollars on advisors who tell him that Clint Eastwood’s 2012 RNC gambit paid off. https://t.co/vgpLN4VqRH
— Sam Seder (@SamSeder) April 4, 2019
It worked so well for Clint Eastwood, so … https://t.co/mKQWKtCidk
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) April 5, 2019
Clint Eastwood is gonna be so mad when he learns that Howard is stealing his bit https://t.co/ooFhM9gVQI
— Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) April 5, 2019
Wait, Clint Eastwood told us the chair was Obama. I’m confused https://t.co/FKyi5qlL01
— Dusty Giebel (@DustinGiebel) April 4, 2019
Is this the same chair that Clint Eastwood was yelling at a few years back? https://t.co/vOBIONmezq
— Charles Gaba (@charles_gaba) April 4, 2019
This guy’s an idiot. There is no other word for it. https://t.co/ULtjTvZoMr
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) April 4, 2019
I realize now, only too late, that the proper response to Howard Schultz was not to mock him, but to quietly sign on as his consultant and milk this scorching dumbass for millions https://t.co/rDgqXnOon1
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) April 5, 2019
There one moment in every day of the Howard Schultz campaign when I half expect Ashton Kutcher to jump out from behind a curtain to tell America we are being Punk’d https://t.co/KC343TQmhb
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) April 5, 2019
I would like Howard Schultz to talk to anyone who worked in a Hill office for literally any of the past umpteen immigration debates about tracking call volume and then say with a straight face that immigration could be solved if politicians just considered the American people. https://t.co/Hiyos2g3j4
— Dara Lind (@DLind) April 5, 2019
Watch the clip above, via Fox News.