APOLOGY LIGHT: Anheuser-Busch CEO offers flat apology following Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney backlash.
Anheuser-Busch’s top executive on Friday offered an apology flatter than a day-old Bud Light as the beer giant reels from the backlash over its sponsorship deal with controversial transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO Brendan Whitworth said in press release titled “Our Responsibility To America.”
“We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”
Whitworth finally broke his silence over the brewing controversy but made no mention of the sponsorship deal with Mulvaney — which has led to calls for a boycott of the nation’s largest beer company.
He also didn’t address reports that senior executives were kept in the dark about the Mulvaney rollout.
Instead, Whitworth said he was “focused on building and protecting our remarkable history and heritage.”
“Moving forward, I will continue to work tirelessly to bring great beers to consumers across our nation,” said Whitworth, a Harvard Business School graduate who served in the Marines and was a CIA officer.
The $132 billion beer company has seen its market value plummet by some $5 billion since the campaign was launched April 1.
As Matt Walsh tweeted in response to Whitworth’s non-apology apology:
The statement won’t satisfy their conservative customers because there is no apology or acknowledgment of wrong. 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.
The result was a spectacular ratio on Twitter last night: Bud Light resumes tweeting but gets majorly ratioed as Twitter users dunk on the woke beer brand.