Papa John's sales may be ????? ?????? ??????terrible, but apparently they're not desperate enough for customers that they're willing to embrace racists.
Peter Collins, a public relations representative for the company, told the Louisville Courier Journalon Monday that Papa John's does not want nor does it need the business of racists.
SEE ALSO: Pizza gets political: The Papa John's vs. Pizza Hut war heats up“We condemn racism in all forms and any and all hate groups that support it," Collins told Courier Journal. "We do not want these individuals or groups to buy our pizza.”
The comment comes after Papa John's CEO John Schnatter blamed his company's plummeting sales on NFL players' #TakeAKnee protests of police brutality during the national anthem.
Papa John's is a sponsor of the NFL, so Schnatter claimed that the on-field NFL anthem protests have resulted in boycotts of games (by the way, those boycotts were proposed and encouraged by President Trump), which have hurt pizza sales.
"The NFL has hurt us. We are disappointed the NFL and its leadership did not resolve this," Schnatter said on a conference call.
In response to Schnatter's statement, the alt-right sprung into action. A blog post on white supremacist site The Daily Stormer,which featured a photo of a pizza with pepperonis in the shape of a swastika, declared Papa John's the "official pizza of the alt-right."
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The alt-right also initiated a boycott of Pizza Hut after they perceived Pizza Hut's CEO's statement that the NFL protests had not hurt sales as an expression of sympathy for the NFL national anthem protesters. Then DiGiorno even started trolling Papa John's on Twitter, and now it's a whole thing.
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With the response from the alt-right, Papa John's is apparently having to walk back the CEO's words. Papa John's did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the CEO's specific position on the white supremacist support for his company.
Well, you know what they say — vote with your pizza?
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