People are freaking out about a National Park selling Trump Wine - but there's a perfectly reasonable explanation
Hollis Johnson
- Trump Wine was spotted at a gift shop in Shenandoah National Park.
- People were immediately convinced that Trump was using his position as president to boost sales at Trump Winery, which is run by his son.
- However, the National Parks Service said that an independent company runs the park's gift shops.
Outrage is brewing online over a Virginia national park selling wine from Trump Winery.
While some are accusing Trump of using his presidency to enrich his family, it seems that the wine sales are separate from the national government.
Gift shops at the Shenandoah National Park were selling Trump Wine, E&E News reported on Tuesday.
"If this is the level of Trumpism at national parks, what other policy issues have that level of Trumpism?" Bill Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity, told E&E. "It just raises a number of disturbing and intriguing conflict-of-interest issues."
However, the National Parks Service provided a reasonable explanation for the wine.
A spokesperson told Business Insider that the wine in question was not sold by Shenandoah National Park, but instead by the park's concessioner, Delaware North Corporation.
"The concessioner has been selling wine from the distributor of this particular winery in Virginia for years," a spokesperson said in an email.
The spokesperson continued: "The National Park Service (NPS) authorizes concessioners to sell categories of retail goods and products like t-shirts, baseball hats, and in this case wine. However, the NPS does not specify what brands of these products should be sold."
Many people are still angry about the deal on social media.
Trump Winery, which is run by the president's son Eric, has received backlash following some of Trump's controversial political stances and actions. In February, there was a movement backed by a local chapter of the National Organization for Women to boycott Wegmans for selling Trump wine at Virginia locations.
In October, the NPS proposed a fee increase that would more than double how much it costs for people to enter Shenandoah and other popular national parks during busy times of the year. People visiting the park by car would have to pay $70 between June 1 and October 31, compared to the current price of $25.
- We bought a house in Japan for $30,000. We'll have more land than we could afford in the US, and our kids will be more independent.
- Rumors Prince William is having an affair with Rose Hanbury are flooding social media again after Stephen Colbert waded into 'Katespiracy'
- CEO says he tried to hire an AI researcher from Meta, and was told to 'come back to me when you have 10,000 H100 GPUs'
- Housing markets remain strong in 2024, sales rise 20% across six metro cities in Q1
- Meet RCB’s WPL 2024 star Ellyse Perry, who played both football and cricket World Cups
- Headaches, acidity, eyesight issues & more — working for over 52 hrs/wk is taking its toll on Indian techies
- Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip for flagship Android phones
- Lenovo launches new lineup of gaming laptops with AI features in India