In the aftermath of the violent riot that took place at the U.S. Capitol last week, Hallmark Cards has asked that a pair of Republican Senators, namely Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Roger Marshall (Kan.), return the four-figure donations that it made to them.
That's kind of a weird sentence.
As first reported in the political newsletter Popular Information, the company's political action committee (HALLPAC) asked for returns that totaled $7,000 (for Hawley) and $5,000 (for Marshall). Whether it actually works or just serves as a PR move remains to be seen, but the sums were allocated to the senators during this past election cycle.
Hallmark's calls come as both senators voted to sustain objections against certifying Electoral Results in favor of Biden for the states of Pennsylvania and Arizona. The two Trump allies backed conspiracy theories that several states were only won by Biden/lost by Trump due to widespread voter fraud. Those theories remain dumb and unsubstantiated, and undoubtedly contributed to Wednesday's chaos.
Hallmark's move comes after other companies, like Facebook, Mastercard, and Microsoft, have also publicly said they'd be looking at altering/reviewing how political donations are done.
Hallmark, not surprisingly, also had to address media about this.
“Hallmark believes the peaceful transition of power is part of the bedrock of our democratic system, and we abhor violence of any kind,” said a company spokeswoman, JiaoJiao Shen, to The Kansas City Star. “The recent actions of Senators Josh Hawley and Roger Marshall do not reflect our company’s values. As a result, HALLPAC requested Sens. Hawley and Marshall to return all HALLPAC campaign contributions.”
These comments reflect others made earlier in the day. I guess if you're going to pay PR people you might as well use them:
Since, for the past several years, Twitter has become almost exclusively an outlet for political commentary (excluding NFL Sundays) the Hallmark news was brought up on that site on Monday. Here's six examples of probably about 20,000:
