A pub that Trudeau visited for a PR stunt deleted photos of him from their social media after realizing that association with him was hurting their business.

Immediately after the restaurant’s Instagram account posted photos with Trudeau posing with staff, the negative comments came flooding in by the thousands.

“So within a few hours, we had thousands of comments, we were getting hundreds of private messages, we are now getting phone calls to the brewery, and all of these comments are extremely negative, vulgar, there is a lot of profanity being used, sexualizing our staff,” said business co-owner Jared Murphy in an interview with CBC News.

“To see a group of individuals, who have never even visited our establishment, who are taking a political stance, to make threats against our brewery, to say that they are going to take us down, that they are going to wait until we declare bankruptcy until they finish with us, that was really hard for our staff to see.”

After Trudeau’s face appeared on Lone Oak Brewpub’s social media, the PEI business reportedly saw its online rating fall from 4.8 out of 5, to 2.8.

Note: It was first reported that these photos were pulled, but as they now appear on Lone Oak’s Instagram account, it’s presumed the business re-uploaded photos with PM Trudeau to still have them but be free from the thousands of negative replies initially reported.

While CBC reported the story as one would expect (by quoting Liberal MP Heath MacDonald’s reference to the commenters as “right-wing extremists”), they didn’t have the same stance in April when a similar incident occurred.

At that time, Conservative candidate Pierre Poilievre held a rally at a venue hosted by Steam Whistle Brewery. Anti-conservatives subsequently launched an onslaught of negativity and “hate” toward Poilievre and his supporters, to which Steam Whistle responded by distancing themselves from Poilievre. 

“Steam Whistle is in no way affiliated with Pierre Poilievre, does not endorse his political views, nor did the brewery sponsor the event,” the company stated. 

While Murphy didn’t distance himself from Trudeau as Steam Whistle did to Poilievre, Murphy says he’d welcome any political figure into his business. A noble stance.