“The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg blasted Anheuser-Busch over its patriotic-themed commercial featuring Clydesdale horses, saying that Bud Light’s parent company needed to “get the horses out” following backlash over its decision to partner with transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
Goldberg took umbrage over the ad because it suggested that “horses are so much more American than trans people.”
“Listen, Budweiser, we are all Americans here, we appreciate your beer whether it’s light or regular beer, you have every right and we have every right to buy it if we like it,” Goldberg said during Monday’s episode of “The View” on ABC.
“Don’t let them scare you. Lets us scare you,” Goldberg said at the end of the segment.
Bud Light’s sister brand Budweiser released an ad over the weekend featuring the famous Anheuser-Busch Clydesdale horses.
In the ad, the animals are seen traversing the country from New York City to the Grand Canyon.
“This is a story bigger than beer,” the ad’s narrator says in the ad. “This is the story of the American spirit.”
At one point, the ad showcases two people raising an American flag as one places her hand over her heart.
The ad followed a half-hearted apology Friday by Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth after the company faced backlash for its sponsorship deal with Mulvaney, a social media influencer with 10 million followers on TikTok.
Goldberg seemed perplexed at the anger over the Mulvaney tie-up, saying: “The company puts out a statement saying they didn’t mean to address an issue that divided people, but I want to know what are you so angry about?”
“Beer does not have, I mean it’s not Democrat or Republican, it doesn’t have a belief system, it’s just beer!” Goldberg said.
Goldberg’s co-host Sunny Hostin said that the Mulvaney controversy revealed the extent to which the US was “highly transphobic” and that the proposed Bud Light boycott had become a “transphobic issue.”
Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin praised Bud Light for making a “smart move” in partnering with Mulvaney since it was a way to make “inroads with the LGBTQ community.”
Griffin said that the average LGBTQ drinker “tends to like craft beer and skinny cocktails, not Bud Light.”
Anheuser-Busch’s top executive on Friday offered an apology that critics said was flat as the beer giant reels from the backlash over its sponsorship deal with Mulvaney.
“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” 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.
The $132 billion beer company has seen its market value plummet by some $5 billion since the campaign was launched April 1.
Busch distributors around the country have been feeling the fallout, with many bars in conservative states from Tennessee to Wyoming refusing to stock Bud Light.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
