I spent my Sunday mad.

Before I get into it, some disclosures. Every human is biased (anyone who tells you they’re not is lying… or they’re a new AI language model that doesn’t have hallucinations). My bias? Well, I have quite a few. I sell at Sephora. I love the team there. I love the brands I sit next to. And selling at Sephora has allowed my company to grow, grow up, and hire incredible people. Je suis très invested in Sephora.

In the age of the internet, sparking someone’s anger isn’t hard. Outrage, after all, is the easiest way to farm engagement. Even when I look at my own content, my top-performing pieces are the ones where I rail on the industry, tear into the FDA’s painfully slow and archaic approach to sunscreen filters, and call out misinformation. In short, when I’m really pissed off and over it.

So, when I woke up Sunday to tens of texts from fellow founders distraught that “Sephora donated to Trump’s campaign,” my first reaction was, What fresh hell is happening here? Then I remembered: don’t get mad, do some research. And, talk to experts. Experts are necessary because a) my bias, and b) I’m not an expert in campaign financing. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I want someone to double-check my work.

I will NOT be sharing the videos. This gives further engagement (and incentive) to incorrect information.

Very quickly, the reality started to form.

Foreign entities cannot donate to any political candidate. It’s illegal (for now). When you search the FEC for "Sephora" as an employer, you’ll find hundreds of individual contributions from American employees to the Harris-Walz campaign. So, no, Sephora did not donate to Donald Trump. Like all misinformation, it morphed. Commenters quickly defended the claim, saying Sephora must have donated to the administration because, well, the owner of LVMH (Sephora’s parent company) is friends with Donald Trump. The son of the owner of LVMH went to Mar-A-Lago to discuss a business deal!!!

Bernard Arnault, the owner of LVMH and once the richest man in the world (luxury is currently in its flop era financially), was allegedly behind the donations. Important to keep in mind there is no record of this, it’s all conjecture/rumors. The logic goes, all billionaires are guilty of being friends with Trump. Important to note most billionaires won financially with Trump’s election. Therefore, that French billionaire *must* have donated to him.

While yes, all billionaires seem to be frenemies (or, in the case of Elon Musk, a simp), Arnault is the only billionaire who lost $3 billion in net worth with Trump’s election, this may be due to Trump’s much-publicized tariffs. For those not in the loop (as a business owner, I sigh when I learned about this), from NPR:

"Trump has proposed adding a tariff of 10% to 20% on all imports, with significantly higher levies on imports from China. Forecasters at Pantheon Macroeconomics project that a 10% tariff would increase inflation by about 0.8 percentage points next year and impose an additional drag on U.S. manufacturers."

To avoid spiraling into a deep dive on how this will increase the cost of goods for consumers, let’s agree on one thing: a 10%-20% price hike on a Louis Vuitton bag or Dior lipstick was not on the bingo card for 2025.

While there’s something to be said for boycotting billionaires by not shopping at their stores, weird to single out Sephora. By that logic, Fenty must have donated to the Trump campaign too (also owned by LVMH, and also enriching Arnault). Or Loewe. Or any of the other 75 brands Sephora owns. As we all know, our queen Riri was in the comments on the 6th.

badgalriri

A post shared by @badgalriri

After expressing their ire at Sephora, most of the comments online offer an alternative: buy directly from brands (doing that generally benefits brands more due to better margins), or shop at ULTA. Important to note: ULTA has shareholders like billionaire Warren Buffet, who sat this election out, and BlackRock. The CEO stated he “didn’t care” who won the election. Both, according to him, were “good for Wall Street.”*

Share

As expected, the creators who realized the way they presented the information was misleading corrected it. The corrections didn’t perform as well as the misrepresentation, but we all know lies tend to outperform truth more often than not. A correction is better than no correction.

Two things to takeaway from this: when you’re angry and you start lashing out, make sure you’re right. Don’t trust videos that aren’t sourced. Even when they are, are the an expert in their field? If they aren’t, check the source and then call your cousin that works in the industry associated with said subject matter. The best way to fight billionaires is to stop buying, that and not electing their besties.

*NOTE: an earlier version of this Substack linked an incorrect article and statement to BlackStone’s CEO. BlackRock’s CEO has taken a more neutral stance donating to both Republicans and Democrats. This election cycle the stance was far different than in the past (see article from Reuters here).