It has been over three months since trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a 50-second Instagram video revealing a custom Bud Light can with her face on it – causing angry conservatives to spiral out of control and boycott the beer brand. And while the right-wing furor seems to have finally begun dying down, the infamous “Tiger King” has decided it’s time to weigh in from prison.
“Budweiser- Try putting the world’s favorite transphobic gay redneck on a can and get back to selling beer,” wrote Joe Exotic’s team on Twitter before touting his presidential campaign: “Joe Exotic 2024.”
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The tweet was accompanied by a doctored photo of a Budweiser can sporting the face of Joe Exotic alongside a tiger.
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Exotic – whose real name is Joseph Allen Maldonado – rose to fame when the Netflix special Tiger King was released just as the world went into quarantine in 2020. It became one of the most-watched shows on the streaming service. Eventually, Exotic’s support of Donald Trump became well-known.
He is currently serving a 21-year prison sentence for killing and selling tigers and for hiring hitmen to kill wildlife activist Carole Baskin. But that hasn’t stopped him from running for president – as a Democrat. He has also asked both Trump and President Joe Biden to pardon him.
Bud Light has faced a decrease in sales after it angered both progressives and conservatives with how it handled its Dylan Mulvaney sponsorship.
Conservatives lost their minds over the fact that the company uplifted a trans person at all. They posted videos as they dumped out Bud Light cans and shot up cases of Bud Light with semiautomatic rifles. Elected Republicans baselessly claimed that Mulvaney was a pedophile and that the global balance of power would be upset by her Instagram video. Others said that they were boycotting Bud Light, often switching to other LGBTQ+-friendly brands.
The response from Bud Light’s parent company – Anheuser-Busch – then proceeded to anger liberals. The company’s official statement explained that it “never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” adding, “We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.” It did not defend Mulvaney or stand by its decision to partner with her.
Mulvaney later revealed in an emotional video that the brand never reached out to her as she experienced “more bullying and transphobia than I could have ever imagined.”
“For a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse, in my opinion, than not hiring a trans person at all,” she said, “because it gives customers permission to be as transphobic and hateful as they want.”