Keurig CEO Bob Gamgort on Monday said the company didn’t intend to take sides in an “emotionally charged debate” over Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore by pulling its ads from Sean Hannity’s Fox News show.
In a memo to Keurig employees, Gamgort criticized his company’s decision to tweet about withdrawing the ads.
“This gave the appearance of ‘taking sides’ in an emotionally charged debate that escalated on Twitter and beyond over the weekend, which was not our intent,” Gamgort said in the memo, according to the Washington Post.
{mosads}Keurig on Sunday said it would pull ads from Hannity after the Fox News host urged viewers not to rush to judgment about the allegations that Moore engaged in sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old girl when he was 32.
“We worked with our media partner and FOX news to stop our ad from airing during the Sean Hannity Show,” the company tweeted from its official account after the liberal group Media Matters for America raised the issue.
In response, Hannity encouraged his fans to break their Keurig machines.
Gamgort said that the public announcement on Twitter was “highly unusual” and “done outside of company protocols.”
“I apologize for any negativity that you have experienced as a result of this situation and assure you that we will learn and improve going forward,” Gamgort wrote.