Online vendors still peddling T-shirt promoting Capitol riot
T-shirts that celebrate the attack on the U.S. Capitol and falsely accuse President-elect Joe Biden of pedophilia were still being sold on Tuesday at Amazon, eBay and other online retailers.
Outside sellers on the e-commerce platforms, as well as sites such as Noelfashiontees.com, are offering T-shirts that read "Battle for Capitol Hill Veteran," for example. Teespring.com is selling a T-shirt that says "Biden Likes Minors," with the letters B, L and M set off in reference to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Other retailers that were selling politically charged or insensitive merchandise related to the January 6 Capitol riot, such as Etsy and Zazzle, moved to remove the items shortly after critics pointed them out. In most cases, retailers took down the T-shirts after saying the material violated company policies against hate speech or inciting violence.
Amazon did not respond to requests seeking comment. It appeared to have taken down the shirt, which remained available as of Tuesday morning, by the afternoon. After being made aware of the "Biden Likes Minors" shirts, a spokesperson for eBay told CBS MoneyWatch the retailer would be "reviewing and removing those shirts."
"At eBay, we have a strict policy against hate and discrimination to ensure our platform remains a safe, trusted and inclusive environment for our global community of buyers and sellers," eBay said in a statement, adding that it "prohibits items that promote or glorify hatred, violence or discrimination."
The eBay spokesperson noted that the company has also removed merchandise that supports far-right conspiracy theory QAnon.
Soon after the Capitol attack, Shopify removed President Donald Trump's campaign store and said the merchandise being offered violated the Canada-based company's policy against sellers promoting violence. Mr. Trump's Make America Great Again hats, Trump 2020 buttons, flags, pennants, T-shirts and bobbleheads are still up for sale on Amazon by third-party sellers.
Amazon recently removed QAnon merchandise from its site. Last August, Amazon removed a T-shirt seller who sold offensive sweatshirts referring to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
Amazon, through its web-hosting company, earlier this month also pulled the plug on conservative social media site Parler because it featured what Amazon described as violent content. Soon after, Google and Apple removed the Parler app from its stores.
The "Battle for Capitol Hill" T-shirt on Amazon had been available on Zazzle, but the online retailer removed it last week, the New York Times reported. Etsy also cited promotion of violence when it recently removed a T-shirt that read "Camp Auschwitz," making light of the more than 1 million people who died in the Nazi concentration camp during World War II.
