Has Anheuser-Busch suffered enough for the Dylan Mulvaney debacle? GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump thinks so.
In a post to his Truth Social platform on Tuesday afternoon, the former president called the Bud Light ad campaign with the transgender “influencer” a “mistake of epic proportions,” but said the parent brand, AB InBev, was “not a Woke company.”
He added that he was “building a list” of companies that are even woker, “and might just release it for the World to see.”
It’s been the better part of a year since the Mulvaney debacle began — April 1, 2023, to be exact, when Mulvaney posted an Instagram video that sparked a furor. And you can imagine that the executives involved now wish it was all just an April Fools’ prank.
Alas, no: On Jan. 31, Fox Business reported that the Bud Light brand was still hurting, with year-over-year sales down 29.9 percent year-over-year for the week that ended Jan. 20, according to Bump Williams Consulting and NielsenIQ data.
What’s more, it’s not exactly like Americans decided to swap beer for tequila or anything like that. They were just tired of their brew being politicized — as witnessed by Bud Light’s loss being its competitors’ gains.
“Molson-Coors’ Coors Light saw 12.2% sales growth, while Miller Lite sales rose 6.9%, and Yuengling Light soared by 72.3%,” Fox Business reported.
“Modelo Especial, the Mexican lager owned by Constellation Brands, also gained further ground against Bud Light, seeing a 10.8% sales boost on the week compared with the same time in 2023, when Modelo eclipsed the A-B brand to become the best-selling beer in the U.S.”
However, on the week of one of the more hotly anticipated Super Bowls in recent memory — which could again remind the folks at Bud Light, the official beer of the NFL, just how much trouble they’re in if sales come in that much worse than they did last year — Trump asked conservatives to call off the Clydesdales.
Should Bud Light get a second chance?
“The Bud Light ad was a mistake of epic proportions, and for that a very big price was paid,” he wrote in the Truth Social post.
However, he added that “Anheuser-Busch is not a Woke company, but I can give you plenty that are, am building a list, and might just release it for the World to see.
“Why not, the Radical Left does it viciously to well run, Conservative companies – and people!” he added.
“Very nasty, but it’s the way they play the game!”
“On the other hand, Anheuser-Busch spends $700 Million a year with our GREAT Farmers, employ 65 thousand Americans, of which 1,500 are Veterans, and is a Founding Corporate Partner of Folds of Honor, which provides Scholarships for families of fallen Servicemen & Women,” he continued.
“They’ve raised over $30,000,000 and given 44,000 Scholarships. Anheuser-Busch is a Great American Brand that perhaps deserves a Second Chance? What do you think? Perhaps, instead, we should be going after those companies that are looking to DESTROY AMERICA!”
However, even on Truth Social — a platform by and for Trump-adjacent social media personalities who bristle at the censorship on platforms like Facebook and what used to be Twitter — this didn’t go over quite as well as Trump would probably have hoped.
“They never apologized sir,” one user responded. “They aren’t on our side. They found out. Sorry…it’s a no from me sir”
“Sorry President Trump, I can not in good biblical faith support any company that pushes a transgender and a homosexual agenda on our children,” another wrote. “They FAFO. [F***ed Around and Found Out.] They are done in our circle.”
“Why is everyone else apologizing for Bud Lite, but NOT Bud Lite?” another asked.
Indeed, Anheuser-Busch InBev has never really apologized for the Mulvaney debacle, despite the fact it basically disowned the “influencer” and those involved in the ad campaign within weeks.
Ultra-patriotic commercials featuring blue-collar Americans lovin’ them some country music and the like were prominently splashed all over TV and social media. The CEO said that the idea the Mulvaney partnership represented a campaign was “misinformation.” Anything that smells slightly of DEI-tastic wokeness has been memory-holed around Bud Light’s brand or the parent company.
But an apology for wading into the culture wars? That’s a bit too much to ask, apparently.
This isn’t the first time that Trump or his camp has called for a truce between conservatives and AB InBev, either.
During a podcast just two weeks after the Mulvaney debacle began unfolding, Donald Trump Jr. admitted that “Anheuser-Busch totally s*** the bed with this Dylan Mulvaney thing” but that, “I’m not, though, for destroying an American, an iconic company for something like this.”
That being said, there is some merit to what’s being said by Donald Trump père et fils.
It’s good to see conservatives band together to essentially wipe out a third of a brand’s sales in one fell swoop. It’s less heartening when those conservatives put on shoes by Nike — a brand that nixed an American flag shoe at the behest of Colin Kaepernick, a man who supports a charity devoted to the ideals of a convicted cop-killing black radical. Or when they buy their kid a pack of Skittles — a brand that pushes Black Lives Matter and transgender ideology via candy wrappers.
Bud Light may not be the only brand to flirt with hardcore progressive messaging, no, and far from the worst. But this is what happens when you roll the dice on wokeness. Most of the time, the furor goes away in a matter of weeks, if it takes hold at all.
In Anheuser-Busch InBev’s case, they’ve turned Bud Light into the official beer of wokeness, and nothing short of an apology and years of careful advertising will undo that.
Not even Donald Trump, popular as he may be among conservatives, can undo that.
