John Schnatter, the founding father of Papa John’s Pizza who was pressured to step down as CEO after uttering a racial slur throughout a convention name, was slammed on Tuesday for telling a cable information channel that he had “misplaced a house” in Florida on account of Hurricane Ian.
Schnatter, whose internet value was pegged by Forbes at round $1 billion in 2017, is the proprietor of an expansive actual property portfolio that features some 20 properties all through the nation, together with a $6 million condominium in Naples, Fla., in accordance with Louisville Enterprise First.
The mogul informed OAN on Tuesday that his property in Naples suffered harm from the huge Class 4 storm which left dozens lifeless after bringing file rainfall, flooding and storm surge to Florida.
In a viral clip circulating on-line, the cable community famous that Schnatter, 60, was talking from one among his different properties in Utah.
“After all, you’re at the moment in Utah however we’re seeing the photographs of your own home in Naples,” the anchor, Stella Inger Escobedo, stated through the interview with Schnatter.
“It seems it's fully beneath water.”
“Simply seeing all these photographs — it’s heartbreaking,” Escobedo added. “Are you able to inform us the aftermath in your neighborhood?”
Schnatter stated the extent of the harm depicted within the photographs “provides you somewhat little bit of perspective…[as to] how devastating this storm is.”
He then added that he wasn’t “apprehensive about myself as a result of I've the assets and the workforce and institutional information” to get by the disaster.
“You simply can’t think about how dangerous that is and my coronary heart goes out to the oldsters in Florida,” Schnatter stated.
“Yeah, I misplaced a house, however they’ve misplaced every thing.”
Schnatter and OAN had been ridiculed on social media for the phase.
One Twitter person sarcastically remarked: “I’m not apprehensive as a result of I've 600 million and might afford correct insurance coverage. OAN is ridiculous.”
Others additionally mocked OAN for misspelling the phrase “hurricane” within the chyron earlier than rapidly fixing the typo.
“Nicely it’s a hurrican, not a hurrican’t,” tweeted one Twitter person.
However others defended Schnatter. They famous that he acknowledged he can be higher off than most individuals in Florida who've had their properties destroyed and lives upended.
“Idk looks as if u took this gorgeous outta context right here,” one Twitter person wrote.
“Isn’t he sorta admitting that as a result of he’s wealthy he’ll be simply nice and that folks that aren’t Papa John won't be?”
One other Twitter person wrote: “i imply at the very least hes being sincere, he might’ve pretended it impacts him much more.”
On the time Schnatter filed for divorce from his spouse in 2019, he owned at the very least three properties in Anchorage, Ky., not removed from Louisville. The properties, which totaled greater than 100 acres of land, had been managed by a restricted legal responsibility co-owned by Schnatter.
After he was pressured out as CEO in 2018, he began promoting a big chunk of his 31% possession stake in Papa John’s. In complete, he pocketed greater than $500 million from the sale of his shares within the firm that he constructed into the fourth-largest pizza chain within the nation.
At the very least 71 Floridians have been confirmed lifeless on account of the hurricane, in accordance with authorities.
About 520,000 properties and companies in Florida had been nonetheless with out electrical energy as of Monday night, down from a peak of two.6 million. However that's nonetheless practically the identical quantity of consumers in all of Rhode Island.
A Sept. 29 estimate from CoreLogic discovered that wind and storm surge damages from Ian might complete between $28 billion and $47 billion, in accordance with CNBC.
With Submit wires
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