Black Rifle Coffee Company

I have been reading about this for a while now. This company is supposed to support veterans, and now there is some sort of a lawsuit against them because they have apparently been cheating the veterans out of millions of dollars.
I actually didn’t pay a lot of attention to this until today, when someone posted that they are a large supporter of Actblue, the democratic PAC.
So, maybe they have been taking the money that is supposed to go to veterans and donating it to the democratic reelection funds, it looks like .
Who else knows more about this ?

 

I went back and started looking at the information about the lawsuits, and some of it is awful, blatant sexual attacks on employees, as well as the mis-statements about the company being veteran owned (misleading), and also because of the pretending to be conservative while supporting BLM and calling Kyle Rittenhouse some pretty horrible names and people like him the “scum of the earth”.
It looks like people started finding out about BRC back then , when Kyle was on trial, and he wore something that was their merch, and that is when they said the awful things about Kyle.
I am not even going to put up links, some of what I read is so disgusting !

 

I dunno. I don't see it as a charity or a contribution. For me, it's a purchase. I buy Black Rifle coffee because it's affordable and I like it.

 

Out of curiosity, I spent a little bit of time looking into this and, from what I can see, from the actual Federal Election Committee website, the contributions they record list the contributor, by name, with Black Rifle Coffee being the employer. An employee named Sherrie Taylor made several small contributions to ACTBLUE, while another Black Rifle Coffee employee named Jarred Taylor made more (but also small) contributions to WINRED.

Interestingly, Wikipedia has a listing for a Jared Taylor, defining him as an American white supremacist and editor of the American Renaissance, but they are different people.

Evan Hafer, Black Rifle's founder and CEO, made several much larger contributions to Dan Crenshaw's campaign. While you and I might recognize Dan Crenshaw as being a neoconservative, not everyone takes the time to look beyond the veil, and I can see that Dan Crenshaw would look attractive to someone whose focus was on military veterans and conservative rhetoric.

Other contributions from Black Rifle employees went to the America Reloaded PAC, to Graham Allen, who ran against Rep. Tom Rice in the GOP primary (Rice had voted to impeach Trump), to Anna Paulina Luna, an Air Force veteran who was elected as a Republican to the US Congress in Florida, and to a Libertarian candidate.

Popping into a few websites, such as military.com and pjmedia.com, it looks to me like the controversy came about because Evan Hafer, BRC's CEO, wanted to separate the company from some people who were being portrayed as extremists, probably more for the sake of the business than political leanings. Prominent among them was Kyle Rittenhouse, who wore a Black Rifle Company shirt in one of his post-trial interviews, as well as the Proud Boys, some of whom have pled guilty to January 6 charges.

Again, I think what we're looking at is someone with conservative leanings, but who doesn't necessarily do his own homework, or (more likely) who got scared because of the vicious media attacks against Rittenhouse and the Proud Boys. I can appreciate that a company might not want to be too closely associated with the subjects of a full-scale negative media campaign. It is a business, after all.

Most of the controversy seems to be stirred up by Reddit contributors whose goal is to cancel a conservative company from both sides, and from the New York Times. The Left has always hated BRC and they still do, so, if they can separate them from their base market, they could crash them.

 

It does matter to me.
When I am ordering my garden seeds and plant starts, I usually buy them on ebay, and many of the people there who sell their home grown plants and seeds are veterans who have moved out to the country to live and try to support themselves from their homestead.
Even if they are not a vet, it is still someone who is a very small business person, and I feel good when I can help even a little bit by purchasing my gardening plants there.

 

When everything else is equal, I might opt for a business that is locally owned, Christian-owned, or supports some political cause that I agree with, but, for the most part, I make my purchase decisions on the basis of cost and quality. Black Rifle might have gotten my attention because of its conservative or veteran affiliation, but I subscribe to it because the prices are good and I like the coffee.

 

This has gotten to be a big thing online now.
There is another company which does NOT sell coffee, and helps veterans, and is named Black Rifle Company, so almost the same name as the Black Rifle Coffee Company.
They have been online trying to explain that they are a completely different company, have nothing to do with selling coffee or donating to Actblue, and they supported Kyle Rittenhouse back when everyone was calling him a killer.
They were apparently kicked off of facebook for their support of Kyle.
Because so many people have been boycotting the Black Rifle Company that actually helps veterans, not realizing that it is a different company than the coffee- seller one that pretends to support vets, they have been losing a lot of their support, and have been trying to let people know.

 

Since I wouldn't buy coffee from someone who doesn't sell it, I don't understand the confusion.

 

Obviously, people don’t buy coffee from a company that does not sell it, but they ARE boycotting the company that does sell it. The problem is that people who were donating to the company that helps vets are not donating to that company, thinking they are the same company and now they are not able to help the vets as well as they were doing before.
So they are trying to explain the difference to people and try to get the donations for helping vets again.
The coffee-selling company probably had people buying their coffee because they also thought it was the same company and that by buying black rifle coffee, they were also helping vets, which they weren’t.
Someone who just buys the coffee because they like that brand, probably does not care either way.

 

I buy coffee that I like, and from companies that sell coffee. I've never heard of this other company and don't know what they do or sell, but they might want to change their name if it's causing them a problem.

It looks to me like this other company caused the problem. Assuming that they said or did something to give the idea that they were supporting Kyle Rittenhouse, the Black Rifle Coffee Company was asked about it, and they simply clarified that they were not supporting the legal advocacy efforts related to Rittenhouse. That was taken as turning on him, when the company was simply saying that they weren't involved, which makes sense, given that the closest they have come to taking sides in a legal dispute was in their support for the NRA.

The Black Rifle Coffee Company contributes to the NRA, the Wounded Warrior Project, the Gary Sinise Foundation, and some others, but wasn't involved in the Kyle Rittenhouse thing. I don't particularly support the non-profits they contribute to, but I like the coffee.