Robby Starbuck, Tennessee political commentator and documentary filmmaker, said he expected a “David vs. Goliath fight” when exposing Walmart Inc. for its “woke” corporate policies, however, ended up in discussions with Walmart executives that resulted in an agreement about the company’s woke policies moving forward.
Since June, Starbuck has worked to expose multiple large American companies that push DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) initiatives in the workplace. Starbuck’s work to expose such policies have led the targeted companies to publicly reverse course amid backlash from consumers.
On Monday, Starbuck announced that Walmart was the latest company that would be dropping its “woke” corporate policies in response to questions about its practices.
Starbuck said Walmart, which is America’s largest employer with 1.6 million employees, offered seven total concessions, including ending its Racial Equity Center, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs, reevaluating its supplier contracts, and more.
On Tuesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, Starbuck said he expected a “David vs. Goliath fight” when he approached the company about his work to expose its practices, but ended up in discussions with Walmart executives about charting a new way forward to get back to “neutrality” within the company.
“We wanted everything to be perfect because this is the largest employer in America. We’re talking about a company worth about a trillion dollars. We anticipated a David vs. Goliath fight. We went to them last week on a Wednesday…and showed them what we had,” Starbuck explained.
“[Afterwards], they said we’d like to have a discussion, actually. So we entered into a discussion period where we discussed exactly how they could correct these issues and at the end of it, it was very productive, and we ended up at a place where they agreed to all of the major things that we felt were very important for consumers to be able to trust them going forward,” Starbuck added.
Starbuck said Walmart’s concession to work on ending its woke policies is very likely to have an effect on its suppliers and other companies in fear of being exposed for their woke policies.
“I’m very hopeful that we’re going to see even more movement as a byproduct of this. If you think about the downstream effects of Walmart changing, Walmart has countless supplier companies that have had all this pressure put on them to adopt wokeness. Now, suddenly all of those companies no longer have that pressure. So you’re going to see a cascading effect within those groups that are suppliers to Walmart, where they drop this stuff as well. So it’s not just the millions of employees Walmart has, it’s not just the trillion dollar company, it’s all of those suppliers, which are many, multi billion dollar companies themselves,” Starbuck explained.
“I think we’re going to see other big retailers jump on board and realize this is an opportunity. Especially right now, there’s a major opportunity after Walmart, because now other companies would not be such a big story if they dropped their [woke policies],” Starbuck added.
Overall, Starbuck said his campaign exposing companies for their woke policies is successful due to the financial harm it inflicts.
“These campaigns have been so successful…We’re talking about billions of impressions. So companies can’t afford to dig in with us because we will continue every single day dropping new information, and it’s really a nightmare situation for companies. They understand now that the best thing you can do is come to the table and figure out sensible changes,” Starbuck said.
“I’m not asking them to adopt my politics. I’m asking them to be neutral and get wokeness out of the workplace and stop shoving it down people’s throats,” Starbuck added.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Robby Starbuck” by Robby Starbuck.
