Papa John’s Ex-CEO John Schnatter Says N-Word Controversy Was A ‘Fabricated’ Setup In Viral Video
The founder and former CEO of Papa John’s said the pizza chain’s new leaders have “destroyed the company” and “fabricated” the N-word controversy.
In an interview with WDRB News, a Fox affiliate in Louisville, Kentucky, John Schnatter claimed he’s had “over 40 pizzas in the last 30 days.”
“It’s not the same pizza,” he said. “It’s not the same product. It just doesn’t taste as good.”
He also ridiculed the company’s new leadership, including the current CEO, Steve Ritchie, and board members Olivia Kirtley and Mark Shapiro, who he said “should be in jail” for stealing the company, WDRB reports.
After first stepping down from his role as CEO in 2017 when he blamed slow pizza sales on NFL players protesting during the national anthem, Schnatter then resigned as board chairman in 2018 after using the N-word during a company conference call.
Now, he’s saying the new leaders “stole the company, and now they’ve destroyed the company,” WDRB reports.
“The day of reckoning will come,” Schnatter said to WDRB about the truth coming out concerning his ousting.
“I never dreamed that the people that I cared about, that I loved, that I made multimillionaires, would do what they did,” Schnatter also told WDRB.
He claimed that the N-word controversy was “fabricated” by insiders at the company, WDRB reports.
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“Shame on them,” he said in the WDRB interview, adding, “This is all a farce. Nothing sells like the truth, and the truth, sooner or later, all comes out.”
Schnatter also told WDRB how the new CEO and the board of directors “all used the Black community and race as a way to steal the company.”
As far as a possible return to the company, which he said he doesn’t want to do, Schnatter told WDRB, “If the management team was out, and I went back in, they’d be cheering. They’d be going back flips. They’d be bouncing off the wall.”
