Bed Bath & Beyond Executive Chairman Marcus Lemonis implied that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s social media strategy is shutting out “investment and capital” into California.
“I would think a governor would want to attract investment and capital into the state. In fact, he did the opposite and rejected it,” Lemonis said on Fox News’s Hannity on Wednesday.
Lemonis referred to his announcement that his chain will not “open or operate retail stores in California” amid its attempt to make a “comeback.”
“I tried to articulate it in a nonaggressive way why our company wasn’t going to reinvest in California,” Lemonis said. “What I found out this afternoon is that Governor Newsom has enough time to respond to a tweet, as opposed to a private DM or having somebody reach out, to remind everybody in America that in 2023 before we bought the intellectual property, that the company went out of business.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to Newsom’s office for comment.
Since a number of Fox News’s programs mentioned Newsom, the Governor Newsom Press Office account responded to the late-night shows, but did not explicitly mention Lemonis.
“MAGA HATES ME BECAUSE THEY HATE YOU. THEY HATE THAT CALIFORNIA IS THE 4TH BIGGEST ECONOMY IN THE WORLD,” the account wrote. “THEY HATE THAT CRIME IS DOWN, THAT WE’RE #1 IN FARMING (I LOVE THE FARMERS!), MANUFACTURING, TOURISM & TECH… ALL WHILE WE GIVE AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE, FREE SCHOOL MEALS (MAKE AMERICA PREGNANT AGAIN!), PAID “BABY LEAVE” FOR MOMS (THEY SHOULD NOT RETURN ANYWAYS!!), $20 MINIMUM WAGE & SO MUCH MORE FOR THE PEOPLE!!!”
The all-caps writing style is part of a new social media strategy Newsom’s press office pursued to mirror President Donald Trump.
NEWSOM DISMISSES BED BATH & BEYOND ANNOUNCEMENT THAT CHAIN WON’T OPEN IN CALIFORNIA
“What I don’t want to do [is] put my shareholders, my employees, and myself in a situation where we are regulated to a zero,” Lemonis said. “We don’t want to spend $100 million coming into California and then find out that the state’s going to take it all and waste it all.”
Overstock acquired Bed Bath & Beyond in the months following its bankruptcy and rebranded to Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.
Despite the change in ownership, the company did not reopen any stores that it had closed.