Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch’s partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney infuriated large segments of the American populace.
Men are not women, up is not down, and black is not white. A beer that tastes like swill and implicitly endorses the perversion of God’s created order was the final straw for many.
People were justifiably outraged at Bud Light, and subsequent boycotts have resulted in plummeting sales, a shakeup in company leadership, and general brand damage. Culturally, it was an unmitigated catastrophe rarely seen in the retail industry.
Now? Sens. Ted Cruz and Marsha Blackburn, two ardent Republicans, have formally opened an investigation into the Belgian brewing giant, which could result in a grave legal injury.
Cruz and Blackburn announced in a press release on Wednesday that they would ask the Beer Institute to investigate whether Anheuser-Busch’s partnership with influencer Dylan Mulvaney violates the Beer Institute’s guidelines against marketing to minors.
Cruz and Blackburn are, respectively, the ranking members of the Senate Committee on Commerce and the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security.
In a letter urging Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth to sever all ties with Mulvaney, senators cited “evidence showing that Dylan Mulvaney’s audience skews younger than the legal drinking age and that Mulvaney’s social media content appeals to young viewers.”
“We would urge you … to avoid a lengthy investigation by the Beer Institute by instead having Anheuser-Busch publicly sever its relationship with Dylan Mulvaney, publicly apologize to the American people for marketing alcoholic beverages to minors, and direct Dylan Mulvaney to remove any Anheuser-Busch content from his social media platforms,” the senators said.
“Second, we believe that Anheuser-Busch’s clear failure to exercise appropriate due diligence when selecting online influencers for its marketing efforts warrants detailed oversight by Congress.
“To that end, this letter includes a series of document requests that will help clarify how Anheuser-Busch vets its partnerships and how Anheuser-Busch failed in assessing the propriety of a partnership with Dylan Mulvaney.”
The letter then elaborates on some of the previously mentioned evidence concerning Mulvaney’s fan base. The social media sensation has 1.8 million Instagram followers and 10.8 million TikTok followers.
Cruz and Blackburn noted that Mulvaney is well-known for a video series titled “Days of Girlhood” that documents his “gender transition” The letter stated that the series “received over 750 million views in less than 100 days,” citing Mulvaney’s talent agency.
“The use of the phrase ‘Girlhood’ was not a slip of the tongue but rather emblematic of a series of Mulvaney’s online content that was specifically used to target, market to, and attract an audience of young people who are well below the legal drinking age in the United States.”
Any “objective survey” of Mulvaney’s social media content, according to the letter, “clearly presents a fake, pre-pubescent girl persona that is created and presented specifically to appeal to young viewers.”
Cruz and Blackburn may be employing an ingenious strategy that few conservatives have considered.
When the Mulvaney controversy first erupted, no one asked, “What about the children?” However, now that Cruz and Blackburn have posed this question, it opens a whole new can of worms for those cans of disgusting beer.