Smithfield Foods has taken a public relations beating from NASCAR fans this week.
After it announced it was leaving Richard Petty Motorsports, The King released a statement that said he had a handshake agreement with Smithfield for the sponsorship to continue. Then Smithfield fired back and called Petty a liar -- the company said it had no such agreement -- and ripped the team for putting out a sub-par product that wasn't competitive enough for its liking.
Now, Kasey Kahne has come out on support of Smithfield with this one, short tweet.
Tanner and I eat @SmithfieldFoods bacon couple times a week. We will keep after it! Thanks for staying in @NASCAR
— Kasey Kahne (@kaseykahne) September 13, 2017
Kahne later said there's nothing to the tweet, that he doesn't like negativity and simply thanked a sponsor for staying with NASCAR.
.@kaseykahne says there's nothing to his tweet about Smithfield. He doesn't like negativity on SM and thanked company for staying in racing
— Alan Cavanna (@AlanCavanna) September 13, 2017
Still, some found humor in the situation, and this has been making its way around social media:
https://twitter.com/NASCARoast/status/907782141848674304