Donald Trump just tweeted that he just had a very nice meeting with the Harley Davidson executives and they had a photo op with two New Harley's on the White House lawn.
I agree with Harley canceling the Milwaukee visit because of the pending protests. It is far more productive to focus on making your motorcycle brand more competitive than diving into politics! Indian motorcycles are cutting into Harley's market share.
That fox6 article has a lot of what is basically cut and paste from the CNN article, and added in lots of rants from protesters celebrating that their rights to free speech combined with intimidation quashed rights to free speech without intimidation.
The facts here still don't add up. CNN reported something, but HD is flat out denying it, even in that same article, and I haven't seen any confirmation of the whole thing from white house sources.
So either it as all just made up, or it was true, HD was trying to hide it, asked the White House to help them cover it up, and they did.
HD is treating it pretty gently for a total fabrication that hurts them badly.
Something is wrong here. Probably several somethings.
Trump played that well. Best not to fake something you know nothing about. He can surely understand motorcycles as an industry. Knew not to fake knowing about getting on one.
To put it in Rumsfeld speak... He knows what he knows. He also knows what he does not know.
Thank you Harley Davidson for asking the president not to come to Milwaukee. It saved the taxpayers the cost of flying Air Force One Half was across the country to travel to Milwaukee and it saved the Wisconsin taxpayers the cost of paying overtime to the police to maintain crowd control for the visit. Everything that the president wanted to accomplish was done right there in Washington DC with Harley bringing the motorcycles and executives to visit the White House! I thought it was a great job by all! I still like Harley Davidson even though they don't make a motorcycle that I like to ride! I still prefer a sport bike with upright seating position! The Low Rider is about as close as they make for me!
I've got 4 bikes. all from different phases of Erik's influence. Love them all, and all for different reasons. Still have an urge for a springer-softail...
I'm not going to make any comments on folk that bought the scam. ( if indeed it was) I could have jumped on the bandwagon too but was too lazy to complain about a company that already made me dislike upper management. ( I never was mad at the workers )
I give fair warning I'm just going playground mocking for the next panic attack based on CNN propaganda.
I will skip "yo mama" riffs since that can be traumatic for grand parent aged delicate snowflakes. "Raised by QVC buying hippies" is likely, however.
My guess is that it was somewhere in between. Talk of a visit, talk of a protest, change in visit plans to be less hassle all around. Both sides probably figured it wasn't worth the trouble.
Just a guess on my part though though.
The HD disclaimer had the smell of careful lawyering (which I am plenty familiar with). No visit was scheduled and no visit was cancelled. That's pretty precise language and I'm sure it's true, for the right definition of "scheduled".
Which is all fine. If HD did back away from the protests, there is some fiscal sense to that, but it makes the "tough American and free" business veneer look a little thinner.
Or CNN could have just been happy to embrace a lie by somebody with an agenda.
I also expect corporate lawyer stuff to be really broad. As broad as possible in fact. They are smart that way.
That's usually the tell I look for. You can never be sure, but this sounded like people sat in a room worrying about something bad they really had done, and crafted a narrow but true denial that was trying to sound wide. And they did a good job of it.
But I'm paranoid that way, and this is just my opinion and speculation.
