On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump offered a defense of the world’s largest beer company after nearly a year of right-wing ire towards Anheuser-Busch InBev for a social media promotion involving its Bud Light brand and a transgender influencer.
The offer of a “Second Chance” from the frontrunner for the Republican nomination came as a major fundraiser for Trump’s campaign is set to be hosted by one of the beer company’s top lobbyists next month.
As of August, Trump also owned between $1 million to $5 million dollars in Anheuser Busch stock, according to financial disclosures he signed and submitted to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.
“The Bud Light ad was a mistake of epic proportions, and for that a very big price was paid,” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “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. They’ve raised over $30,000,000 and given 44,000 Scholarships.”
Those numbers Trump offered are frequently featured in Anheuser-Busch promotional material and repeated by their defenders in public. UFC CEO Dana White cited almost identical data points in an October interview on Fox News as he announced a partnership deal. Ray McCarty, the president of Associated Industries of Missouri used the same statistics about their veterans programs in an August op-ed praising the company.
“Anheuser-Busch is a Great American Brand that perhaps deserves a Second Chance? What do you think?” Trump added on Tuesday.
On March 6, Donald Trump Jr. will be in Washington for a campaign fundraiser with lobbyist Jeff Miller, whose firm has collected $820,000 from Anheuser-Busch since 2020, including $270,000 last year, lobbying disclosures show. The fundraiser, hosted by Miller, is charging as much as $10,000 a person and will fuel cash to Trump’s joint fundraising committee.
A flier for the event shared by Miller on social media advertises it will be attended by over 20 senators, Speaker Mike Johnson and the rest of GOP House leadership, and around 100 members of Congress.
Trump’s call for conservatives to forgive Anheuser-Busch comes after a monthslong campaign to discredit the brand for partnering with social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney. In April of last year, Mulvaney posted a video less than a minute long on her Instagram account about a promotional giveaway Bud Light was doing in connection to the NCAA men’s college basketball March Madness tournament.
She also showed a tall boy beer can the company sent with her face on it to mark the one year of a series she did documenting her transition as a transgender woman.
The response from right-wing figures and politicians was swift and extreme, outraged that the iconic American beer brand would partner with a transgender person. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis -- who has made policies restricting education on gender, blocking access to gender-affirming medical care and ending government recognition of transgender identity central to his administration -- ordered his state’s government to probe Anheuser-Busch.
“At the end of the day, there’s got to be penalties when you put business aside to focus on your social agenda at the expense of hardworking people,” the then-presidential candidate said in July.
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, another GOP candidate for president, said of Mulvaney at a campaign event “that is a guy, dressed as a girl, making fun of women.” And musician Kid Rock posted a video of himself shooting Bud Light cans with a submachine gun, though TMZ spotted him drinking the beer at a concert a few months later.
"Are they trying to ruin Bud Light? Are they trying to take down some of our most iconic American brands?" Joe Rogan said on his podcast, the most popular in the world, in June. "Take a brand like Bud Light. It's for blue-collar drinking people and they like to watch football and drink Bud Light and then all of a sudden you have this mentally ill person who's just an attention whore."
The attacks came amid a skyrocketing push for legislation restricting LGBTQ rights, with a particular focus on transgender Americans, across the country. At least 508 bills were introduced and 84 were passed into law in 2023, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Violence and threats against the LGBTQ community are also on the rise, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said last year.
Mulvaney told the New York Times that she was stalked, harassed and targeted with death and bomb threats for months after posting the video. She had already been targeted by Republicans after speaking with President Joe Biden at the White House in 2022. Then, Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn posted a clip of Mulvaney on social media, writing “Dylan Mulvaney, Joe Biden, and radical left-wing lunatics want to make this absurdity normal.”
For their part, Anheuser-Busch worked quickly to disassociate themselves to stem the outrage as sales declined slightly in the ensuing months. They did not connect with Mulvaney as the harassment and anti-trans crusade began, the influencer said last June. They restructured their marketing protocols and placed two executives on leave. And they said they would refocus their promotional campaigns on sports and music, with senior executives expected to carefully oversee brand deals.
The beer behemoth did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump’s comments or their handling of the attacks on their brand and Mulvaney last year.
Kansas City Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce, boyfriend of Taylor Swift, has also become the target of right-wing anger for his sponsorship deal with Bud Light.
Target faced a similar backlash last year and said in a statement at the time that since introducing a collection of LGBTQ Pride merchandise “we've experienced threats impacting our team members' sense of safety and well-being while at work.” They removed items from their shelves that “have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior.”
As Trump defended Anheuser-Busch, he said he was “building a list” of “woke” companies for his supporters to target.
“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! Very nasty, but it’s the way they play the game!” he wrote. “Perhaps, instead, we should be going after those companies that are looking to DESTROY AMERICA!”