Social media users shared an image suggesting that Lowe’s CEO was urging certain customers to go to rival Home Depot.
A Threads post from August 23 showed an image of a CNBC logo with this alleged quote from Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison: “If conservatives don’t like our values, they should take their money to Home Depot.”
This post has been flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat fake news and misinformation in its news feed.
This is a fabricated quote and the image has been altered. A spokesperson for CNBC told PolitiFact that the network did not air the screenshot. In response to the claim, Lowe’s also posted on X on August 26: “This statement is false. The CEO of Lowe’s did not make this statement. Everyone is welcome at Lowe’s.” When asked for comment, a Lowe’s spokesperson also referred us to this statement.
PolitiFact searched for the keywords in the caption “Lowe’s cuts annual forecast” and found the original clip from CNBC, uploaded on August 20.
The clip featured two quotes from Ellison. The first quote was: “Inflation remains high. And expensive purchases are being postponed as customers sit back and wait for interest rates to fall.”
The second quote was: “It’s not that we’ve seen a dramatic shift in overall customer sentiment one way or the other.”
(Screenshots from CNBC)
We have found no evidence that Ellison said this anywhere else.
In a related CNBC news report on August 20, Ellison also made no mention of conservatives. And we found no other reports in which he urged conservatives to go to Home Depot.
(Screenshot from threads)
Ellison did not tell CNBC that conservatives should take their money to Home Depot. We rate that claim as outrageous!
This fact check was originally published by PolitiFact, part of the Poynter Institute. The sources for this fact check can be found here.
