The Starbucks Racial Incident Was A ‘Set-Up By Left-Wingers,’ Clay Travis Claims

Starbucks is closing all of its 8,000 stores on the afternoon of May 29 to provide racial-bias education training to its approximately 175,000 employees after an incident in a Philadelphia store last Thursday. Fox Sports Radio host and blogger Clay Travis implies, however, that the company instead needs to wake up and smell the coffee.

Travis addressed the racially charged dispute on his very NSFW and irreverent Outkick the Show Periscope broadcast and on his companion Outkick the Coverage blog.

Last Thursday, a Starbucks manager told two black men that the store bathroom was only for paying customers. She called cops when they refused to leave, and responding officers arrested them for trespassing. Charges were later dropped, but the controversy made national headlines as well as prompted protests outside the coffee shop in question. Starbucks Executive Chairman Howard Schultz said that the incident was embarrassing, shameful, and reprehensible and that the upcoming diversity training is only the beginning of policy changes at the company, Axios reported. Starbucks issued a statement of apology for what happened, and CEO Kevin Johnson apologized in person to the two men, CBS News reported.

Asking his online viewers to follow him down what he described as the logic path, Clay Travis insisted that the story doesn’t add up from a common-sense standpoint. In the ordinary course of events, an individual would buy something inexpensive to comply with a store policy, and thereby gain access to the restroom, or go elsewhere nearby, such as a McDonald’s, where a person can use the bathroom for free. He questioned the premise of hanging around long enough to get detained and then getting taken to the police station, all the while without getting a chance to relieve yourself.

On his blog, Clay Travis wrote that he has visited “tons of establishments” over the years whose rule is bathrooms are for customers only and that every single time, he purchased an item so that he or his kids could use the facilities. He also claimed that this kind of policy is common in urban areas where homeless people tend to congregate.

This apparently led Travis to conclude that the incident was staged, and the credulous news media (and perhaps Starbucks itself) accepted it at face value, as he contended on Periscope.

“Starbucks got set up by a bunch of left-wingers who are probably going to sue them for millions of dollars, and they were too…stupid to realize it or they’re not willing to fight it. Both of those are bad. None of this story makes sense….”

Clay Travis conceded that he has some admiration for how this “viral phenomenon” is being orchestrated.

“Somebody tell me how this is not a shakedown. Now in defense of the shakedownees, I respect their ability to play the media like a…fiddle. I respect their ability to take advantage of the gullibility of the left-wingers who immediately say this is racism…moreover, Starbucks is one of the most leftwing, social justice warrior companies in the entire country…just think about it from a logical perspective…this is a perfect example of media not asking good questions and just 100 percent buying into…whatever worldview they have.”

While acknowledging the possibility that the store manager might be racist, he concluded in his essay that “The only way this makes sense to me is if getting arrested was all a part of the plan to extort Starbucks.”

The store manager who called 911 no longer works at that Philadelphia location, but Starbucks declined to comment as to whether she is still employed by the company, CBS News noted.

Separately, Clay Travis chided LeBron James over the irony of the Cleveland Cavaliers superstar’s production company being sued over allegedly stealing the idea of a barbershop-based talk show when James’ organization previously accused the University of Alabama football program of doing the same thing.

Watch Clay Travis, a lawyer who describes himself as a radical moderate who has never voted Republican, and who worked on Al Gore’s presidential campaign, address the Starbucks Philadelphia racial incident below (again, NSFW) and draw your own conclusions.

LeBron sued over barbershop show, Starbucks insanity, Preds start times are crap, Sean Hannity, Netflix! https://t.co/SMAGlPi2mJ

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) April 17, 2018