These days, it doesn’t pay to be a business owner and a Trump donor. Just ask Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow. The zealous Trump sycophant recently visited the former President at the White House, carrying notes that appeared to encourage Trump to invoke “martial law if necessary,” presumably to keep the embattled leader in power in the wake of widespread voter fraud that doesn’t exist. The result of Lindell’s White House visit, and released photos of his notes, is that popular retailers like Kohl’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Wayfair have decided to no longer carry MyPillow. Ouch.
Next on the chopping block is Cara Dumaplin, creator of the Taking Cara Babies courses, which claim to show exasperated parents how to do the impossible: get their babies to sleep through the night. According to TODAY, Dumaplin is some kind of baby wizard, a sleep guru who is talked about with unceasing admiration in parenting groups. “Her program,” says TODAY, “[is] a saving grace for new moms and dads.”
But when it came out that Dumaplin had donated to Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, some moms got mad. And the boycott was on.
25-year-old Sarah Kontorovsky, one of the boycotting mothers, admitted that Dumaplin’s program changed her life for the better. But Kontorovsky emigrated to the U.S. from Nicaragua, and when she discovered that Dumaplin had donated to a President that Kontorovsky considers to be hostile to immigrants, she decided to take her baby business elsewhere.
“[Dumaplin] supports an administration that has been very aggressive to Hispanic immigrants like my husband and I, and the money I paid for her courses funded campaigns that fundamentally reject my family,” Kontorovsky said. “And I find that unacceptable.”
Dumaplin made dozens of donations to Trump between 2016 and 2019. Her husband made additional donations in 2020.
“This wasn’t just a one-off,” said 36-year-old Kristina Edmunson of Portland, Oregon, who also conceded that Dumaplin’s program works. “It made me understand that this was a really committed action on her part.”
In a letter to Dumaplin, Edmunson wrote, “If I had known that you – in your personal capacity – had donated to President Trump I would never have spent a dime on your program. Babies are living in cages away from their parents because of the actions of the President. Even though my 5-month-old still takes naps, she is woke.”
That’s the nice way of putting it. Then there’s this.
“[Dumaplin is] a fascist-funding white supremacist piece of shit,” tweeted Chelsey (@chearykur).
Yikes.
But not all moms agree with Kontorovsky, Edmunson, and Chelsey, with some of them referring to the boycott as cancel culture.
“Maybe I’m not a real Democrat anymore,” wrote MommyAudrey (@AudreyBringgold) on Twitter. “But I don’t think it’s fair. The bad things people think about Trump shouldn’t reflect on his voters, who are just making what they think is the best decision.”
“The people trying to burn #takingcarababies at the stake are the same ones that claim they want unity. They have wasted no time in completely tearing Cara Dumaplin to shreds. What happened to respecting everyone equally? Women supporting women? Hypocrites,” tweeted Angela (@ColombianAzucar).
Dumaplin declined TODAY’s request for an interview. But she did send them the following statement:
“Taking Cara Babies is about helping babies get sleep and parents reclaiming the joy of parenthood that’s often lost due to sleep deprivation,” she said. “Between 2016 and 2019, I made a series of donations (totaling $1,078) to the Trump campaign. As with many citizens, there were aspects of the Trump Administration that I agreed with and some that I disagreed with. I will continue to serve all parents by empowering them with the tools they need to help their babies sleep.”
It’s not clear if the boycott has affected Dumaplin’s bottom line, but she remains quite popular in the parenting world. One need only take a look at her Instagram account, which has a whopping 1.3 million followers.