Howard Schultz is calling out The Washington Post for being fake news.
In an interview with conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, Schultz, who is considering an Independent run for president in 2020, reeled off details of his poor upbringing. Hewitt pointed out his mother’s depression. Schultz spoke of the $96 rent his parents could not pay, which the Starbucks founder wrote about in his new book, From The Ground Up.
WaPo described Schultz as coming from “the country club of projects.”
WaPo‘s Marc Fisher wrote that Schultz depiction of his upbringing is that of a “poor kid” who “escaped” a Brooklyn housing project. “… But Schultz’s depiction of Bayview as a rough, low-income community is inconsistent with the city’s definition of the project, the requirements for tenants to get into the buildings, and the experience of others who lived there,” Fisher explained.
His alleged impoverished childhood aside, Schultz has also received pushback from President Donald Trump, who said he doesn’t have the “guts to run for President.” (RELATED: Trump Trolls Schultz)
Schultz is not wrong to downplay his money since hecklers use it to insult him. (RELATED: Heckler Calls Schultz A ‘Billionaire A**hole’)
When spurred on to do so by Hewitt, Schultz, a billionaire, slapped Washington D.C.’s premiere newspaper, saying this isn’t the first time news outlets have gotten his story wrong. He reasoned that getting pushback on his life story is natural, even if he doesn’t like it.
“Any time you go against the grain, the forces of nature are against you,” he told Hewitt.
HUGH HEWITT: “Well, it’s an incredible story to succeed, leave in 2000, come back in 2008. We’ll get into that. But you’re in breaking news this morning, Howard Schultz. The Washington Post got some oppo dumped on you. They said you didn’t grow up in that poor of a place. Hey, let me tell you, I grew up in Warren, Ohio. I’m a couple of years younger than you. I wouldn’t have changed places with you. It sounds like a housing project. It sounds like your dad, in fact, this might shock you a little bit, Howard Schultz. Your family dynamic sounds exactly like Richard Nixon’s.”
“His father was a serial, I don’t want to call him a loser, but a serial non-performer. Mr. Horizontal, your mom called your dad on the couch. Your mother is a saint, but she suffered from depression and cycled down. It sounds like a very tough childhood, I mean, a very tough childhood. And yet, in the Washington Post this morning, they’re saying that it was the country club of projects. How do you respond to this?”
HOWARD SCHULTZ: “Well, I’ve got to tell you, when I saw the headline of country club of projects, I knew they weren’t talking about the place that I grew up in. But you know, I told a very personal story of the dysfunction and the pressure that I was under living in that apartment, and what I experienced as a young boy. And in the book, I reveal stories I’ve never told before. But my parents could not make the $96 dollars a month rent. And so you know, I look at that story, and it’s consistent, unfortunately, with other stories that have been written about me in the last few months since I decided to consider running for president as a centrist independent outside of the two party system.
“Any time that you are going to try and break the status quo and go against the grain, the forces of nature are against you. But I’m here standing tall because of my love of the country, my profound concern about where we are. This president, I believe, has brought a level of incitement to America and dishonored the Oval Office. And I think he needs to go. At the same time, the two parties are involved in revenge politics every day. And the Democrats are shifting so far to the left that if something, unless there’s some sense brought into the party, we’re going to end up with socialism in America if a Democrat should win. I don’t want to see that happen.”
Fisher said it is Schultz who “has distorted the reality of the place where he grew up in the 1950s and ’60s.”
The reporter spoke to sources who say Bayview, where Schultz grew up, was “middle-class, not lower middle.”
Schultz declined to speak to WaPo for its report.