Hong Defends Thanksgiving Stance Amid 2020 'Cancel' Post Backlash

Francesca Hong, the Democratic socialist running for Wisconsin governor, found herself defending her relationship with Thanksgiving this week after a 2020 social media post resurfaced in which she called for the holiday to be canceled. On Wednesday, she told Politico that Thanksgiving is actually her favorite holiday and that she has no desire to see it disappear.

The post in question, made on X in November 2020, had drawn a sharp line between the pandemic and the holiday itself. "Cancel Thanksgiving. Should have done this in 1621," Hong wrote at the time, going on to describe the holiday as a celebration of colonialism and "the original superspreader event that killed indigenous folx." She was referencing the spread of smallpox among Indigenous populations following European contact. The post was later deleted.

Hong's campaign had previously issued a statement saying she did not actually want to cancel Thanksgiving, but when pressed on the question during a CNN appearance on Monday, she gave a more nuanced answer. She spoke about her background as a chef and restaurant owner, recalling that one of the first community meals she prepared, at age sixteen, was a Thanksgiving dinner. She emphasized the value of bringing people together around a table to share conversation and build connection.

At the same time, Hong acknowledged that Thanksgiving carries real pain for many people in her community. "Views can evolve," she said, suggesting that her thinking on the subject had developed since 2020. She framed her position as one that could hold multiple truths at once—recognizing both the holiday's capacity to unite people and its complicated history. She also suggested that her background in hospitality and community building would serve her well as a governor who could "bring more people to the table."

Her Republican opponent, Tom Tiffany, seized on the apparent contradiction. In comments to Fox News on Wednesday, Tiffany pointed to Hong's earlier post asking people not to gather for "the colonizer holiday" and her recent description of Thanksgiving as "incredibly painful." He used the moment to launch a broader attack on Hong's political philosophy, characterizing her and other socialist candidates as intent on dismantling American cultural traditions. Tiffany listed a range of targets he said Hong had criticized over her political career—Thanksgiving, Christmas, the police, even Culver's restaurants and Valentine's Day—framing these critiques as part of a coordinated effort to undermine the values that hold Wisconsin communities together.

The exchange illustrates a familiar tension in contemporary politics: how candidates navigate the distance between positions taken in different moments, and how opponents weaponize that distance. For Hong, the challenge is to explain how someone can have criticized Thanksgiving's historical foundations while also genuinely valuing the holiday as it exists now. For Tiffany, the contradiction is evidence of a deeper ideological project. What remains to be seen is whether voters in Wisconsin view Hong's evolution as a reasonable recalibration or as a sign of political calculation.