Kid Rock has declared an end to his boycott against Bud Light after the beer company partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
In an interview with Tucker Carlson on his X show, the 52-year-old musician admitted that he’s done boycotting the Anheuser-Busch brand because the company had “got the message”. “They deserved a black eye, and they got one,” Rock told Carlson on 11 December. “Do I want to hold their head under water and drown them because they made a mistake? No, I think they got the message.”
The country rock singer initially began boycotting Bud Light in April this year, after Mulvaney shared a sponsored video to promote Bud Light’s March Madness contest. The partnership instantly received transphobic backlash from conservative politicians and celebrities, while Rock shared a video of himself shooting up three cases of the beer with an assault rifle and calling for a nationwide boycott.
“Hopefully, other companies get it too, but you know, at the end of the day, I don’t think the punishment that they’ve been getting at this point fits the crime,” Rock said during the interview. “I would like to see people get us back on board and become bigger because that’s the America that I want to live in.”
Despite his boycott, pictures obtained by TMZ showed Rock drinking a can of Bud Light beer at a Colt Ford concert in Nashville, Tennessee, last August. Social media users instantly branded the musician - whose real name is Robert James Ritchie - as a “hypocrite” for drinking the beer after voicing his outrage over the brand just four months prior.
Following the conservative backlash, SiriusXM host Howard Stern condemned Rock’s transphobic rant and expressed his confusion as to why “someone would care so much” about Mulvaney’s partnership with the Anheuser-Busch brand.
“I wish I could call Kid Rock and have him come on the show and just tell me: ‘Why are you so upset about this? How is it hurtful?’ I don’t know why he got so upset,” he said on The Howard Stern Show. “Kid Rock, I know him. He’s got a great life. He transitioned from some kid in Michigan to a rock superstar! I’m really dumbfounded by why someone would care so much that they would blow up a can of Bud Light and say: ‘F*** Anheuser-Busch.’ I don’t get it.”
Anheuser-Busch, the producer of Budweiser beers, issued a statement at the time in response to the conservative boycott, saying that they “never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people”.
“We have thousands of partners, millions of fans and a proud history supporting our communities, military, first responders, sports fans and hard-working Americans everywhere,” said CEO Brendan Whitworth. “We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”
Mulvaney has since moved on from the anti-trans backlash, poking fun at the controversy while accepting the award for Breakout Creator at the 2023 Streamy Awards. Mulvaney - who boasts 10.3m followers on TikTok - rose to fame on the platform for documenting her transition, marking each day “of being a girl”.
In her speech, Mulvaney noted that 532 days ago, she posted “a coming out video that turned into my Days of Girlhood series and my life has been changed for the better”.
“But on the flip side, there’s also been an extreme amount of transphobia and hate, and I know that my community is feeling it,” she continued, before calling on allies “to support trans people publicly and proudly”.
As she closed out her acceptance speech, Mulvaney quipped: “I’m going to go have a beer and I love you.”
