A segment on Target’s financial woes on CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip, colloquially known as the Thunderdome, laser-focused on the retailer’s recent financial woes. A liberal panelist took an opportunity to try to make hay at the expense of Scott Jennings, and it did not end well.
Watch as Meidas bro Adam Mockler tried to run through a series of talking points, only to get made to admit he didn’t know what drove increases in the price of vegetables:
.@Scott JenningsKY takes a Meidas Bro to school: "I think if you're going to throw out Donald Trump is responsible for vegetable prices, you should come and know what's going on around the world." pic.twitter.com/huUSxh82cs
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) August 21, 2025
ABBY PHILLIP: I mean, when you look at Target's stock from January until now, I mean, it has plummeted 28 percent. So, most of that time, it is the backlash that is driven by the boycotts.
ADAM MOCKLER: Yes. Target turned on one of their huge consumer bases, which is the opposite of what Phil was saying, and it feels like conservatives spent a decade saying, go woke, go broke. Once the wokeness was removed, now Target is immediately going broke. But, again, I think we'll see a lot of CEOs doing the same thing. We just saw U.S. bankruptcies at the highest rates since Trump's last presidency. We see the economy shuttering due to tariffs. We see vegetable prices going up 40 percent. There are a bunch of different --
SCOTT JENNINGS: You know why?
MOCKLER: PPI just said that vegetable price going up 40 percent.
JENNINGS: Why? You know why? I'm asking if you know what.
MOCKLER: Not sure.
JENNINGS: Storms, weather, droughts all over the world.
MOCKLER: What about electricity prices going up 10 percent?
JENNINGS: It has to be.
MOCKLER: DO you know when liberation --
JENNINGS: I think if you're going to throw out Donald Trump is responsible for vegetable prices, you should come and know what's going on around the world.
The same thing occurred last week, when Congressman Maxwell Frost (D-FL) tried to run off some talking points on Jennings, getting quickly shut down and shut out. Both Mockler and Frost learned that things are different when you step outside the leftwing echo chambers. In Mockler’s case, admitting that he didn’t know the causation behind the numbers he was throwing out was terrible.
The segment itself was built upon a shaky premise, to wit: that Target’s financial woes are the result of their abandonment of DEI and a boycott convened by Black Lives Matter (some say Manors). This is demonstrably false.
Target’s problems go further back than the Second Trump Adinistration. Target stock (TGT) currently trades in the high $90s a share, but went for as high as $261 a share at the peak of the pandemic. The stock took a monster hit in May of 2022 after a huge earnings miss, once the stimulus checks ran out and the supply chain started hiccuping. These things happened as Target decided to insert themselves into the wrong side of every culture war issue. Stocking merchandise from black-owned was, in hindsight, the least of their problems. The writing scrawled itself across the wall when Target began allowing men in women’s restrooms, selling satanic-adjacent onesies and shoving LGBTQalphabetplusplusplus paraphernalia down everyone’s throats during the month of June- including chest binders and “packing” underwear for kids.
Target indeed went “woke”, caught themselves going broke, and attempted a course correction that was too little, too late. To exclude the long train of Target missteps when discussing their current problems is disinformation in furtherance of narrative.
Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned segment as aired on CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip on Wednesday, August 20th, 2025:
ABBY PHILLIP: Tonight: abandon woke, go broke? That is how some progressives are describing the sudden announcement the Target CEO is now stepping down. The brand has taken a serious hit since rolling back its DEI efforts back in January. But unlike other companies who did the same thing, Target's commitment to diversity and inclusion programs has been ingrained in the core of its business for many years. And that included a goal to increase its black workforce by 20 percent after George Floyd's murder, a commitment to add more products from black-owned vendors to stores and pledging millions of dollars to black-led nonprofits. But since its policy changed, Target stock has plummeted nearly 30 percent in sales. They have slumped for the third straight quarter. Black Lives Matter, their official X account, noted that black consumers hold $1.8 trillion in spending power before saying the boycotts will continue. Joining us in our fifth seat is Sheila Kolhatkar. She is a staff writer at The New Yorker. And this is sort of the opposite of the narrative that everybody in corporate America is eager to cave because DEI is bad for business. Clearly, this really upset their customer base and Target is paying the price for it.
SHEILA KOLHATKAR, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: Well, not every DEI program is immediately going to show up in increased profits, but in Target's case, yes, it was actually a big success. Their program promoting black-owned small businesses was a huge success. It drew a lot of consumers from new kind of demographic groups into the store. But we're in this environment where a lot of CEOs are bumbling around, trying to figure out how to avoid drawing negative attention from this administration. They're not necessarily making business decisions based on what's good for their companies. They're trying to kind of preemptively please the president. And it's -- really, it's not good for business. And we're going to see a lot more stories like this where you have these kind of poorly-motivated decisions, political business decisions blowing up, and CEOs resigning as a result.
WILLIAMS: I think who they're trying to please is the shareholders. I think what you're finally seeing is a shareholder revolt. Companies that are not profitable but have shareholders, they have a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders. If they're not profitable and leadership's in the way of that, you get new leadership. That's the way of the world. Corporate America is just watching their bottom line now where, for several years, they were told that ESG and DEI and CRT and everything else that you could virtue signal about was the way of the future, that did not affect their bottom line. And so what we're actually seeing now is a return to actual free market capitalism. And if you're going to watch a company go down the tubes, at some point the shareholders are going to go, stop, we invested, we would prefer you make some better decisions, and they change out leadership.
PHILLIP: Well, I feel what you're describing is exactly the opposite of what happened to Target, because Target is actually seeing their business decline because they -- rather than listening to their customers and doing -- making business decisions based on that, they made business decisions based on political backlash. Like that's actually the opposite of what you're suggesting. And the shareholders are paying the price for that. I mean, when you look at Target's stock from January until now, I mean, it has plummeted 28 percent. So, most of that time, it is the backlash that is driven by the boycotts.
ADAM MOCKLER: Yes. Target turned on one of their huge consumer bases, which is the opposite of what Phil was saying, and it feels like conservatives spent a decade saying, go woke, go broke. Once the wokeness was removed, now Target is immediately going broke. But, again, I think we'll see a lot of CEOs doing the same thing. We just saw U.S. bankruptcies at the highest rates since Trump's last presidency. We see the economy shuttering due to tariffs. We see vegetable prices going up 40 percent. There are a bunch of different --
SCOTT JENNINGS: You know why?
MOCKLER: PPI just said that vegetable price going up 40 percent.
JENNINGS: Why? You know why? I'm asking if you know what.
MOCKLER: Not sure.
JENNINGS: Storms, weather, droughts all over the world.
MOCKLER: What about electricity prices going up 10 percent?
JENNINGS: It has to be.
MOCKLER: DO you know when liberation --
JENNINGS: I think if you're going to throw out Donald Trump is responsible for vegetable prices, you should come and know what's going on around the world.
MOCKLER: Liberation day tariffs only went into effect --
JENNINGS: I don't know why Target's having a problem. I remember a couple of years ago, the conservatives were mad at them and now the liberals were mad at them. So, it seems like they swung --
PHILLIP: I know, but, Scott, we do know why Target's having a problem. Because they've been the target of a boycott because their customers are set --
JENNINGS: And a couple of years ago, the conservatives reminded them.
PHILLIP: Yes. But, clearly, the power dynamic is such that this particular boycott has had a very clear effect on their bottom line.
JENNINGS: Okay. I'm just telling you from a couple of years ago, they had a problem with --
PHILLIP: But I guess that's the thing. It's like if the premise is, to Adam's point, if the premise is that woke is bad for business, then why is Target struggling?
JENNINGS: Well, I think it depends on who you are and what your brand is. I mean, it was clearly bad for Bud Light when they went down that road. And so some corporations have certainly suffered when they've gone down that road. You know, I don't know how -- what Target's core marketing policies or principles are, but every company has to take a look at their, you know, customer base and how they make money and make decisions based on that. It's not smart for corporations necessarily to swing wildly on the political pendulum. And if that is not core to your -- you know, what you're trying to do --
(CROSSTALK)
JOHNSON: The boycott started because people felt as though Target did abandon a key part of its base, a lot of black consumers, that even before the George Floyd protests and the response to that, Target was putting black-owned businesses on their shelves and people saw themselves there and they were purchasing, they were using their dollars to show their power. And so this conversation around woke doesn't work, and I hate that we're using that term, but what you're trying to say is DEI policies aren't working. But the reality is, if we look at since January, the companies that have doubled down on their DEI policies, like the Costcos and the Delta Airlines and Apple, they're actually doing well. And so here's what I'll say about this Target CEO stepping. That's kind of just like smoke and mirrors. They haven't changed their policies yet. So, do we know if this is going to reverse course with what --
PHILLIP: I don't that it's a sign, Sheila, that Target is changing course. It probably isn't necessarily, but it's a recognition that the company's performance is not what they would like it to be, it seems.
KOLHATKAR: Yes. You know, you don't have a CEO stepping down when things are going swimmingly. I mean, that is not typically what happens, but I think it's really hard to be a business leader in this environment. I mean, everything is upside down. You don't know what's going to happen from one day to the next. And I think a lot of them are being influenced by factors that are actually not related to what's best for their shareholders. And the other groups who have an interest in the company doing well. They're trying to placate the president who seems to want to put himself in the middle of all of these private companies and sort of have an influence on how they're running themselves.
PHILLIP: That's a perfect segue to our next segment. So, hold your thought, Phil, because we have a lot more on that.