Operation #TrumpCup

About

Operation #TrumpCup is an activist campaign encouraging supporters of Donald Trump to ask Starbucks baristas to label their coffee cups with the United States President-elect's name.

Origin

In April 2016, actor Scott Baio posted a photograph of a Starbucks cup with the name "Trump" printed on it in a tweet claiming that the barista "refused to call out" the name (shown below). Within seven months, the tweet garnered more than 2,800 likes and 1,800 retweets.^[2]

Spread

On November 9th, 2016, the Deplorable Autumn Rainwater YouTube channel uploaded a video in which a Starbucks employee refusing to put Trump on a cup of coffee and threatening to call the police (shown below). On November 17th, Prison Planet host Paul Joseph Watson retweets the video, which gathered upwards of 11,000 likes and 9,200 retweets in 24 hours.

The same day, the Alex Jones YouTube channel posted a video about the Starbucks incident (shown below).

On November 18th, 2016, Twitter user @bakedalaska^[4] tweeted a picture of himself holding a Starbucks cup with the name "Trump" written on it, along with instructions for followers to go to a Starbucks location and give the barista the name Trump (shown below, left). Within 24 hours, the tweeted received more than 9,700 likes and 6,200 retweets. The same day, @bakedalaska^[3] tweeted an open letter to Starbucks, announcing that #TrumpCup was "not a 'protest'" (shown below, right).

That day, the hashtag #TrumpCup^[6] began trending in the United States on Twitter, leading some to mock the campaign (shown below). Meanwhile, Snopes^[5] published an article about the #TrumpCup posts, noting that while the campaign was widely being reported as a "protest," those participating in the hashtag did not seem "to indicate they were objecting to anything.

Search Interest

External References