Nathan’s Hot Dogs Faces Boycott After Chairman Holds Fundraiser For Donald Trump

A large number of consumers has taken to Twitter over the past few days to announce their plans to boycott Nathan’s Hot Dogs or encourage other people to do so, following news that stated the company’s executive chairman, Howard Lorber, was organizing a fundraiser for President Donald Trump.

The controversy started on Tuesday when Bloomberg reported on Lorber’s Trump fundraiser, which was scheduled to take place in the Hamptons on Friday. This event was said to include a roundtable discussion between Trump and his supporters and was to serve as a means to raise funds for Trump Victory, which Bloomberg referred to as a “joint committee” for the president’s 2020 reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee.

As further noted by Bloomberg, Donald Trump and Howard Lorber have been longtime friends, with the president once describing the Nathan’s Hot Dogs chairman and real estate magnate one of his two best friends. Lorber had most notably traveled to Moscow with Trump on a business trip in 1996 and was also named an economic adviser to his 2016 presidential campaign and the chairman of the board of trustees for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

According to a report from Business Insider, social media users did not take kindly to the news that the chairman of Nathan’s Hot Dogs was holding a fundraiser for Trump. Several Twitter users, many of whom were apparently unaware of Howard Lorber’s close friendship with Donald Trump, said on the social media platform that they were going to stop buying and consuming Nathan’s products due to Lorber’s ties to Trump. These reportedly included celebrities such as The Roots drummer and co-frontman Questlove, who kept it short and sweet with a three-word tweet describing his disappointment.

“Welp. Goodbye Nathan’s.”

welp. Goodbye Nathan's https://t.co/Pr65l2PRll

— Plug 5. (@questlove) August 15, 2018

Originally founded in 1916 by Nathan Handwerker and first established as a hot dog stand in Coney Island, New York, Nathan’s has since become one of the world’s most recognizable hot dog makers. The company, which was sold in 1987 by the Handwerker family to a group of private investors Lorber was a part of, is best known for its annual hot dog eating contests, which are typically held on the Fourth of July. The official Nathan’s website contains a brief recap of its most recent contest, as well as profiles for the current year’s winners — 11-time men’s division champion Joey Chestnut, who ate a record 74 hot dogs in 10 minutes earlier this year, and women’s division champion Miki Sudo.