Buzzfeed, the entertainment and news site popular among young people, has severed an advertising partnership it had with the Republican National Committee over the nomination of Donald Trump.
Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti informed his staff Monday of the decision in a letter in which he likened running RNC ads that support Trump to cigarette advertisements, according to a report from Politico.
“We certainly don’t like to turn away revenue that funds all the important work we do across the company,” the letter said, according to the report. “However, in some cases we must make business exceptions: We don’t run cigarette ads because they are hazardous to our health, and we won’t accept Trump ads for the exact same reason.”
The business arrangement, Peretti said in the letter, was put together in April, before it was settled that Trump would be the GOP nominee.
“Earlier today Buzzfeed informed the RNC that we would not accept Trump for President ads and that we would be terminating our agreement with them,” the letter said. “The Trump campaign is directly opposed to the freedoms of our employees in the United States and around the world and in some cases, such as his proposed ban on international travel for Muslims, would make it impossible for our employees to do their jobs.”
The RNC did not return a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
Buzzfeed’s position against Trump has been made public before. In December, the site’s editor-in-chief Ben Smith told staff that it would be “entirely fair” to call Trump “a mendacious racist.”
