Daily Wire host Matt Walsh piled on Bud Light parent company Anheuser-Busch after the beer maker’s CEO issued a non-apology statement Friday.
Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth released the statement after Bud Light partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney earlier this month. The statement, however, did not make mention of Mulvaney, transgenderism, or offer an apology to offended customers.
“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” Whitworth said in the statement. “We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”
The CEO said that his company supports “our communities, military, first responders, sports fans, and hard-working Americans everywhere,” adding that he spends a lot of time “listening to and learning from our customers, distributors, and others.”
Walsh responded to Anheuser-Busch’s statement, calling it “just as clumsy and stupid as the marketing stunt that got them into this mess in the first place.”
“The statement won’t satisfy their conservative customers because there is no apology or acknowledgment of wrong,” the conservative commentator tweeted. “And it won’t satisfy the Left because it doesn’t affirm transgenderism and admits at least (without using the word) that the trans issue ‘divides people.’ They had a few options in dealing with this PR crisis. Out of all the options, they chose the one with the biggest downside and no upside. Geniuses.”
Anheuser Busch has finally released a statement, and it’s just as clumsy and stupid as the marketing stunt that got them into this mess in the first place. pic.twitter.com/XUndM2b6qh
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) April 14, 2023
Mulvaney, a man who claims to be a woman, posted videos on April 1, showing the transgender influencer drinking Bud Light while dancing and splashing around in a bathtub. Mulvaney also revealed that Bud Light had partnered with him and sent him a can of beer with his face on it.
“Bud Light sent me possibly the best gift ever: a can with my face on it,” he said.
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Anheuser-Busch confirmed and defended its partnership with Mulvaney on April 3, saying that the custom beer cans were a “gift” for Mulvaney’s personal milestone, a reference to the 365 days Mulvaney has gone posting videos in make-up and women’s clothing.
Then as backlash persisted, sources close to the situation told The Daily Wire that the Mulvaney sponsorship blindsided them and “no one at the senior level” of the company was aware of it. The company’s VP of Marketing Alissa Heinerscheid, however, said that she wanted to change the brand’s “fratty” image to something with more “inclusivity” while making an appearance on a podcast just a week before Mulvaney dropped his Bud Light video.
“I’m a businesswoman, I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light, and it was, ‘This brand is in decline, it’s been in a decline for a really long time, and if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand there will be no future for Bud Light,’” Heinerscheid said during the interview.
Other conservative figures, along with Walsh, slammed the beer company following its partnership with Mulvaney. Country singer Travis Tritt said he would “be deleting all Anheuser-Busch products from [his] tour hospitality rider,” while fellow country star John Rich said his bar in Nashville, Tennessee, has been “hard pressed to find anyone ordering” a Bud Light.
Walsh said that after Anheuser-Busch’s statement, “the boycott is still on,” and urged his fellow conservatives to continue pushing back against the beer company.
“The Bud Light boycott has been by far one the most successful conservative efforts to push back against corporate wokeism we’ve ever seen,” he said. “By very wary of any conservative who is naysaying this. We’re actually making a dent and they’re complaining. Remember that.”
Ryan Saavedra contributed to this report.