Former President Donald Trump offered an olive branch to Anheuser-Busch on Tuesday, issuing a post on his social media platform calling conservatives to drop their opposition to the beer company.
“The Bud Light ad was a mistake of epic proportions, and for that, a very big price was paid, but Anheuser-Busch is not a Woke company. 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,” Trump wrote.
Griswold: Sorry, Trump, Bud Light Deserves To Be Boycotted Into Oblivionhttps://t.co/l50Jp9xzUj
— The Federalist (@FDRLST) February 9, 2024
The offer of a “second chance” from the frontrunner for the Republican nomination came as a major fundraiser for Trump’s campaign and is set to be hosted by one of the beer company’s top lobbyists next month.
Last summer, Trump joined several conservative critics, blasting Anheuser-Busch as he promoted the “The Great Patriot Protest and Boycott” book, which celebrates mainstream companies boycotted by conservatives.
“It’s time to beat the Radical Left at their own game. Money does talk, and Anheuser-Busch now understands that,” Trump said at the time.
Anheuser-Busch has been struggling to recover from slumping sales after its brief partnership with Mulvaney last April, a marketing scheme that proved where media personalities, athletes, and musicians called for boycotts against the company amid a wave against woke advertising.
The 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner also sang Anheuser-Busch’s praises, applauding the company for employing 65,000 Americans and partnering with veteran scholarship organization Folds of Honor.
Anheuser-Busch says it employs 18,000 people in the U.S., with another 47,000 people working at independent distributors, while federal filings list just over 20,000 employees in North America as of 2022.
The drama began when Mulvaney, a social media influencer known for videos about her gender transformation, posted a video on April 1 showing herself with a can of Bud Light depicting her face that the company sent to her to mark her first anniversary after coming out as transgender.
By May, however, the boycott has been credited with sinking Bud Light out of the top spot of highest-selling beer, with Modelo Especial surpassing it last May, according to data from alcohol consulting firm Bump Williams.
Some conservatives believe Bud Light deserves a second chance, but do you?
