Sports Team Loses Major Sponsor After Targeting Ocasio-Cortez

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Familiar conservative antagonism of progressive leaders popped up in a surprising place recently when the Fresno Grizzlies minor league baseball team aired a video depicting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) as an “enemy of freedom.” That team has now lost one of their major sponsors with the departure of Sun-Maid raisins, a locally-connected corporation that was one of only a few corporate sponsors that the team started out with. Those that remain include The Fresno Bee, the alcoholic beverages company Tecate, and Coca-Cola

Sun-Maid shared with The Sacramento Bee:

‘We are deeply disappointed by the Memorial Day tribute video the Fresno Grizzlies aired on Monday. Sun-Maid does not support the views or sentiments expressed in the video, nor does it condone the airing of it. While the Grizzlies have apologized for this mistake, we are standing on the side of what we believe is right and terminating our sponsorship of the team.’

As the company mentions, the team has “unconditionally” and at this point repeatedly apologized, although they have been somewhat tight-lipped about how the video ever made it to the screen in between games at their field in the first place.

The montage featured photos of “enemies of freedom” that came in at about three minutes into audio of a speech from former President Ronald Reagan and included an Antifa member and Ocasio-Cortez right alongside dictators like the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — which ironically, President Donald Trump himself continues to elevate as a supposed very smart man as he put it while in Japan recently, but that’s a different story.

Ocasio-Cortez did not publicly explicitly call out the Grizzlies for the video ever airing in the first place, instead using the opportunity to discuss the fact that in the wake of public declarations of opposition to her and her agenda, she often has to deal with rises in hate that culminate in death threats.

The team, for their part, says that “no one from its front office watched the tribute to its entirety before its airing” adding they have apparently “reprimanded the employee responsible for selecting the incorrect Memorial Day video tribute.” They say that it was “downloaded” rather than produced in-house and that the person responsible “wasn’t trying to promote a political ideology” but instead, simply made a mistake.

Still, the reality of the pressure that Ocasio-Cortez and others in her position face remains unchanged. She is mentioned on Fox News at levels on times on par with those of Democratic presidential candidates, and sometimes, even above those levels, which the Congresswoman mentioned as coinciding with death threats against her — which she’s previously shared her office shares the entirety of with Capitol Police.

She has made a name for herself with progressive pushes like the so-called Green New Deal, which calls for net-zero carbon emissions from the United States within ten years. The proposal has received widespread support although with a Republican majority in the Senate and Trump in the White House, it’s blocked, but only for now.

Featured Image via screenshot