Ron DeSantis may sue Bud Light over the Dylan Mulvaney video

It may be three and a half months since Bud Light partnered with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney to release a 50-second Instagram video where she showed off some custom beer cans, but 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis apparently can’t let it go.

Florida Gov. DeSantis argued in a letter that CNN obtained to the state’s pension fund manager, State Board of Administration interim director Lamar Taylor, that Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev violated its legal duties to shareholders by associating with “radical social ideologies,” leading to a loss in sales. The loss in sales will hurt Anheuser-Busch’s stock prices, the letter said, and the state’s pension fund owns 682,000 shares of Anheuser-Busch valued at nearly $46 million.

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“We must prudently manage the funds of Florida’s hardworking law enforcement officers, teachers, firefighters, and first responders in a manner that focuses on growing returns, not subsidizing an ideological agenda through woke virtue signaling,” he wrote, asking Taylor to initiate a review into how the state’s pension fund’s holdings have been affected by the Dylan Mulvaney video.

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DeSantis oversees and is a trustee on the State Board of Administration and the Florida attorney general and chief financial officers – both Republicans – are trustees on the board.

On Fox News yesterday, DeSantis said that Florida may file a lawsuit against Anheuser-Busch over the alleged breach of duties. Fox’s Jesse Watters asked DeSantis if he’s thinking about suing Disney as well – the state pension fund owns $234 million in Disney stock – and DeSantis said, “I don’t know that we’d be the right one to do it.”

Conservatives lost their minds in April when Mulvaney published the short video on her Instagram account. The right has spent the last several months outraged at Bud Light for working with a transgender person, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Rep. George Santos (R-NY), and musician Kid Rock were just a few of the prominent conservatives who made a point of attacking the beer brand.

Several weeks after the controversy began, DeSantis jumped in during an interview with alt-right podcast host Benny Johnson.

“Why would you want to drink Bud Light?” DeSantis complained at the time. “I mean, like, honestly that’s like them rubbing our faces in it, and it’s like these companies that do this, if they never have any response, they’re just going to keep doing it.”

“So, if you as a consumer are like, ‘Yeah, they’re basically’- and, I mean, it’s such a fraud what they’re doing with that, but, like, ‘Yeah, they’re doing that, but I’m just going to keep drinking it anyways.’ Well, then they’re going to keep doing it. So I think we have power as consumers to make our voice heard.”

“And not on every company because sometimes conservative consumers aren’t going to make a dent in some companies. This one is one. If you don’t have conservative beer drinkers, you’re going to feel that. And so, you know, I think it’s a righteous- I think it’s a righteous thing.”

He said it’s a sign of “corporate America” trying to take over the country: “I’d rather be governed by ‘we the people’ than companies.”

Johnson then asked DeSantis if he’ll ever drink Bud Light again.

“No, I don’t think so,” DeSantis said. “You know I’m trying to think like what, what would I do if I had….”

“So they’ve lost a customer?” Johnson asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” DeSantis replied, before admitting that he never drank Bud Light in the first place so he can’t really boycott the beer brand. He said that he and his wife prefer Guinness, a beer company with a long history of supporting LGBTQ+ people in its advertising.