Social media users shared an image that implied the CEO of Lowe’s urged certain customers to take their business to rival Home Depot.
An Aug. 23 Threads post showed an image of a CNBC logo with this purported quote from Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison: “If conservatives do not like our values, they should take their money to Home Depot.”
This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed.
This is a fabricated quote, and the image is altered. A CNBC spokesperson told PolitiFact the network did not air the screenshot. In response to the claim, Lowe’s also posted Aug. 26 on X: “This statement is false. Lowe’s CEO did not make this comment. Everyone is welcome at Lowe’s.” When reached for comment, a Lowe’s spokesperson also pointed us to this statement.
PolitiFact searched the keywords in the image’s chyron, “Lowe’s cuts full-year outlook,” and found the original CNBC clip, uploaded Aug. 20.
The clip showed two quotes from Ellison. The first quote read, “Inflation remains high. And big-ticket purchases are being delayed as customers sit back and wait for interest rates to fall.”
The second quote read, “It’s not like we’ve seen a dramatic shift one way or another in overall customer sentiment.”
(Screenshots from CNBC)
We found no evidence that Ellison said this elsewhere.
A related CNBC news report published Aug. 20 also did not have Ellison mentioning conservatives. And we found no other reports in which he told conservatives to go to Home Depot.
(Screenshot from Threads)
Ellison didn’t tell CNBC that conservatives should take their money to Home Depot. We rate that claim Pants on Fire!
This fact check was originally published by PolitiFact, which is part of the Poynter Institute. See the sources for this fact check here.
