Campbell Soup Company Vice President Kelly Johnston got canned after tweeting conspiracy theories about George Soros helping a migrant caravan coming to the United States. The Campell’s executive tweeted that the Soros-founded Open Society Foundations had funded the caravan, providing “troop carriers” and “rail cars” to support the group of migrants. According to Gizmodo , Johnston is no longer with the company.
“See those vans on the right? What you don’t see are the troop carriers and the rail cars taking them north. @OpenSociety planned and is executing this, including where they defecate. And they have an army of American immigration lawyers waiting at the border,” Johnston tweeted from an account that is no longer active.
The Open Society Foundations denied Johnston’s claim and questioned why the company would support someone spreading false information. Campbells distanced themselves from Johnston’s comment saying his views did not represent the company. A day later, CEO Keith McLoughlin sent a letter to the Open Society.
“We expect our leaders to present facts, to deal with objective truths and to exercise impeccable judgment,” he wrote. ” Mr. Johnston’s remarks do not represent the position of Campbell and are inconsistent with how Campbell approaches public debate.”
Mr. Johnston, neither Mr. Soros nor Open Society is funding this effort. We are surprised to see a @CampbellSoupCo executive spreading false stories. We do support the historic U.S. commitment to welcoming people fleeing oppression and violence in their homelands.
— Open Society Foundations (@OpenSociety) October 23, 2018
On Monday, Campbells announced that Johnston would be leaving the company.
“In the last few days, the company and Mr. Johnston have agreed that under the current circumstances it would be best to accelerate the timing of his departure,” a company spokesperson told CNN Business. Thursday was his last day.
Johnston originally planned to leave in the summer, but the company confirmed that his last day was Thursday.
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The migrant caravan has sparked fierce debate from people around the country, including President Donald Trump, who has called the people seeking asylum in the United States an “invasion” and has threated to close the southern border to stop their movement into the country.
Johnston isn’t the only person who has accused Soros and the Open Society Foundations of assisting the migrants. Soros has also been accused of paying protesters who appeared in Washington D.C. as part of the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination controversy.
Individuals on the far-right fringes have also said that Soros is the leader of a Jewish plot to destroy Christian civilization and of funding the movement led by high school students in Florida for gun control.
Soros was one of the targets of the bomb packages sent to Trump’s prominent targets.