Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You

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PrizePix, run your game. Must be present in certain in certain states visit prize picks.com for restrictions and details so what happened to anheuser-busch like what is if you don't mind since you've thought about this probably more than any living person how exactly did a company an an American company like that,

that you felt like had a sense of the country that it served,

go off in a direction that was so obviously crazy and self-destructive?

How could that happen? you know tucker there's there's a short story to it and there's a long story i mean i'll give you the short version then we can get into the longer version of what happened great but you know i mean the short version is this used to version is it used to be a great American, you know, company. This was owned by the Bush family.
The Bush family started this thing in the 1850s. You know, this is the same time you have the Carnegies, the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers.
You didn't have any of those folks still in the, I don't know, 20 years ago, but the Bush family was actually still running in as Bush 20 years ago, which is crazy. I think they actually have houses right around here as a matter of fact.
I know them. Yeah, you probably know them well.
And so the short story is- Very nice people. Very nice people.
Not everyone in the family, but some of the people- It's a big family. One of the former presidents, great man.
Yeah, it's a big family. So long story short, I mean, the company got so big and at some point it's owned SeaWorld, it owned Busch Gardens, it owned eight helicopters, 10 private jets, and it got a little bit bloated.
So it got taken over by this Belgian company, European company called InBev. InBev came in and bought it in 2008.
And the culture has really changed. Whereas Anheuser-Busch was all about growing the brands, understood the US consumer, Budweiser, Bud Light, all these things.
InBev had a different mentality. They were much more of a, they call it the world's largest private equity from the happen to sell beer.
A lot of cost cutting that went on, brought a lot of European people into the United States, changed the headquarters from St. Louis, Missouri, which is almost the geographical center of the country.
And a wonderful town. Wonderful town.
And they moved it to New York City. And then when they moved it to New York City- Not a wonderful town.
Very, very different town, different mentality. And then all of a sudden, they had bought a bunch of different beer companies.
After buying Anissa Bush, they bought Group Modelo, SCB Miller, took on too much debt. All of a sudden, the company in 2017- Wait, you're saying a private equity firm took on too much debt? Yeah, it wouldn't be the first time.
So it never happened before, right? Never happened before. And I think the bigger problem was is that in 2018-19, for a bunch of different reasons, the company to try and grow, they adopted a lot of the ESG, DEI philosophies that we've heard a lot about, stakeholder capitalism, which is this European concept that businesses are supposed to serve all types of purposes.
That pops up. And then two or three years later, all of a sudden, the company has really changed.
It changed from sort of a great American company based in the Midwest, based off meritocracy values. And then all of a sudden, in the kind of post-COVID, post-George Floyd era, Anna Hezbollah, they start moving away from being a meritocracy, moving more towards diversity, equity, inclusion, moving more towards getting more involved in political issues.
And, you know, unfortunately, with what happened with Dylan Mulvaney and Bud Light, that was the product of maybe 10 years of mistakes the company had made. And now all of a sudden you have a company that's lost 50% of its sales with the biggest beer in America, Bud Light, and they still haven't turned it around.
So that's the short story. Now we can get into the longer story about maybe more broadly what happened.
Okay, so, I mean, you're describing so many American companies, by the way. Yeah.
That trajectory downward. But at the end of the story, there was this revealing moment where Anheuser-Busch executives, or one of them, basically just admitted, I hate our consumers.
And you wonder, like, where does that mind- I mean, people have all kinds of dumb ideas about business and dumb ideas about everything else. But if you're in the retail business, if you're selling products to consumers and you find yourself in a place where you're like, let's piss them off and humiliate them.
Like, that's so obviously insane. Like, how could anybody say something like that? No, totally insane.
And I think, like, let's back up, because, I mean, really, I think this story starts almost 40 years beforehand, where you really are starting to talk about what is the purpose of a corporation? Like, what are businesses in the business of doing? And in the United States, since the 1970s, you had sort of this view of Milton Friedman. Milton Friedman, famous economist, said the purpose of a corporation was to serve its shareholders, the people who actually owned the business.
How do you do that? Well, you focus on your customers, focus on creating great products and services. When you do that, you generate more revenue, you can hire more people, and business continue to grow and do all the great things businesses do.
There was this other philosophy that was more this European view of the world that says the purpose of a corporation is to serve all stakeholders. That was started by Klaus Schwab.
This is the World Economic Forum, Davos type of elite, that over in Europe- What's a stakeholder? So that's the problem. There are thousands of stakeholders.
It's almost the idea of like, when you have this shareholder capitalism model that Milton Friedman says, you must have like one God. The God is the shareholder.
That's who you have to take a look at. But the stakeholder capitalism model, you have thousands of gods.
Those can be activists, government employees, they can be suppliers they can be employees they can be they can be social activists

I mean you name it. There's thousands of them.
People have nothing to do with your company. It has nothing to do with the company.
But you're supposed to be in the business of maximizing value for all so-called stakeholders, for the greater good of society. Sounds very European socialism.
And that's effectively what it was. And both of these systems, they purported to do the same thing 40 years ago.
They said, we're going to make people more money and lead to better societal outcomes. Problem is over the last 40 years, I mean, if you just take a look at sort of the U.S.
economic model versus Europe since the 19th century, U.S. has trounced Europe on both of those premises.
If you take a look at our stock market returns in the U.S., take an S&P 500, over the last 40 years, we've generated 10% a year on average. Europe broad-based industries are like 6% to 7%.
But then in perspective, you had $100,000 invested in the U.S. in 1970 and $100,000 in Europe, in the U.S., it'd be worth $4.5 million today.
It'd be worth $1.5 million in Europe. So that's a huge difference based on the compounding interest of money.
And then separately, if you take a look at the US, Europe might say, okay, well, we didn't make as much money, but do we lead to better societal outcomes? And I would say, no. I mean, if you take a look at the US, almost every broad-based prosperity metric, GDP growth, per capita income, interest rates, unemployment rates, the US trounces Europe on all of those.
I mean, our poorest countries in the United States are generally wealthier than most of the European countries on a per capita basis. And so over the last sort of 40 years, you kind of had these two systems that were developing and the US model to me is just the superior model.
I mean, I believe in American exceptionalism. I think our American model works.
The problem is with the American model is every once in a while, they're kind of bumps in the system, bumps in the road. And the last time we had kind of a real economic bump in the road, let's call it was 2008, 2009.
You had sort of the great financial crisis that happens. And after the great financial crisis, there's sort of a lot of people that were upset that banks got bailed out.
It seemed like Main Street was the one that sort of that lost out, people lost houses. And so all of a sudden business and capitalism kind of has to repair itself and repair its image.
And the way that it did that is, especially if you remember the Occupy Wall Street movement, Occupy Wall Street and everyone else says, okay, well, banks and financers and companies, they need to be a bigger part of the system and making sure that everybody can succeed. At the same time, then you had Obama was the president and he came up with some diversity, equity, inclusion mandates that were happening within sort of the broader-based government.
And for the next three or four or five years, you see a lot of companies that are trying to repair the image of so-called business and capitalism in the United States. McKinsey came out with a famous study that says diversity wins, where they said, let's force sort of diversity initiatives on a lot of companies, and those ones would do better.
This study has been thoroughly debunked. You had a lot of asset management companies, the BlackRock, State Streets, Vanguards of the world.
They started really talking more about environmental social governance issues, which was a term that was coined in 2005. Really never went anywhere.
The United Nations originally coined it. If the United Nations coined something, usually be skeptical of it.
Didn't go anywhere for the first five or 10 years. But after the Occupy Wall Street movement, a lot of big asset managers kind of picked up this term, started talking about environmental social governance issues.
And really, a lot of these issues picked up tons of steam when Trump was first elected. And when Trump was first elected, and he pulled out of these supranational organizations, the Paris Climate Accords, pulled out of the human rights sort of campaign coalitions.
All of a sudden, a lot of these more progressive institutions that said, wait a minute, like we thought government was going to solve these existential crises of, you know, climate change and banking systems and systemic racism and you kind of name it. Now, all of a sudden, they're not.
And we need business to do this. And by the way, a lot of progressive pension funds, state of California, state of New York, European sovereign wealth funds like Norway and others, they have collectively trillions of dollars of assets.
And they said, okay, now if a lot of these banks that had all of a sudden started talking about environmental, social governance issues, we're going to manage money on our behalf. We wanted them to solve a lot of the existential crises in this country that Trump was not going to do in 2016.
And at that time period, you had a really interesting thing that happened. We've been with BlackRock.
Quite. Yeah.
The largest asset management company in the world. Managed about over $10 trillion worth of capital.
And what was interesting is BlackRock was really one of the leaders of this movement, along with State Street, Vanguard, those three largest asset managers in this entire country, about $20 trillion worth of assets. They're the single largest shareholder in 95% of the S&P 500.
And they wield a lot of influence in terms of telling companies kind of what to do. And the problem with a lot of these big asset managers is that it's not their own money that they're managing.
If this was like George Soros type money, or Bill Gates, it's their they, you know, ask companies to do all types of crazy things. But the problem was with BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard is they were managing, I mean, a lot of times like your money, my money through 401ks or pension funds or others.
And because of their largest sort of clients, which again are more the progressive pension funds and others are telling them that they want business to get more involved in politics and social issues. Then all of a sudden, they're starting to force a new agenda on corporations, telling companies that we want you guys to get more involved in environmental, social, and governance issues.
And they even changed the purpose of a corporation in the 2018-2019 time period. There was a famous letter that Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, wrote in 2018, essentially telling companies that we want them to now earn their social license.
And you're going to do that because we have evolved the purpose of a corporation with a group known as the Business Roundtable in the United States to be more focused on your stakeholders. So you're no longer focused on shareholders, we want you to focus on stakeholders.
And that is now who you are now going to focus on for maximizing value without defining, again, who those stakeholders are. And so this becomes very, very problematic in this sort of 2018, 2019 timeframe because companies are frankly confused.
And it set up really a lot of, I'll call it kindling for an event that happened in 2020, which was COVID. And all of a sudden, companies are being told they need to earn their social license.
They're being told that now no longer your shareholders, your kind of primary person that you're serving, but you're now serving all stakeholders without defining what that is. And in the 2020 time period, now all of a sudden you have this event of COVID.
And when COVID happens, music problem, it's a crazy time period. We don't need to go through all of it, but companies frankly lost their sense of direction about who were they serving, what their mission is.
I mean, you remember we all had to flatten the curve and, you know, the so-called flatten the curve in early 2020. And companies were essentially- Except for the George Floyd rioters who were under no such obligation, I noticed.
Correct. But that's obviously after this.
But, you know, in March of 2020, I mean, almost every company lost what its mission was. What do I mean by that? Well, let's go back to what at Anheuser-Busch, we were making hand sanitizer in 2020 all of a sudden because we need to flatten this curve and we're all in this existential crisis of COVID.
You had Delta Airlines, no longer flying passengers, but it's now flying medical supplies all around. You had General Motors, which is now making ventilators for the country.
Walmart, setting up COVID testing facilities. So all of these companies all of a sudden were told to focus on a lot of different initiatives besides just their typical products and services.
And frankly, like a lot of these efforts, like you think about it, the curve has flattened very quickly. You know, there was no real existential crisis like we thought there was.
But the problem was that since all these companies had kind of been pushed off their mission, then we had this next issue, which was the George Floyd issue that pops up in May of 2020.

And George Floyd dies. And now the next existential crisis that every single company in the United States is looking to solve is systemic racism.
because their largest so-called shareholders

in the BlackRock, State Street's vanguards of the world

who had told them that now we want you focused

on solving more of these stakeholder and societal issues. We need you to now solve these issues.
I mean, you went down the list. I mean, it was crazy.
After George Floyd was murdered, you had 70 different companies in the United States here donated over $200 billion to Black Lives Matter in the United States. That's like more than the GDP of Portugal, which is crazy in terms of the amount of money that was donated to these causes.
And banking donations just wasn't enough. I mean, even Zuckerberg and Facebook at the time donated some eight-figure sum to it.
But then when that summer, Trump had the famous tweet about when the looting starts, the shooting starts, then everybody wanted him to now all of a sudden take Trump off of Facebook because it just wasn't enough just to

donate. You actually had to silence folks as well.
On top of that, in 2020, 2021, you had the Black Rocks and States use Vanguard's the world as well. Not only are they, this is where the big problem comes in, is because they are controlled, the largest percentage of companies in the United States, they have disproportionate power to advocate for policies at companies, and then most importantly, to vote for shareholder proposals at companies, where if you own $25,000 of stock in any company in the United States, you can put up what's known as a shareholder proposal that the so-called shareholders of the company, they can vote on.
And what was crazy is in 2020, 2021, you had a lot of these activists that because the purpose of this corporation had changed in the United States, away from shareholder value to this European stakeholder model, said, okay, now businesses, again, they have to maximize value for me. So you saw there's a group called Color of Change, and're, it's a nonprofit group and their mission is to stamp out systemic racism in the country.
You know, okay, fine. Like, you know, you can do that, you're whatever.
But like they went to Apple, they bought $25,000 worth of shares at Apple, you know, and they put up this shareholder proposal that said, hey, you Apple, we want you guys to do a racial equity audit to figure out how you've contributed to systemic racism and white supremacy in the country. And Apple, which is, you know, pretty liberal leftist board, you know, company of Tim Cook, who's the CEO and very liberal board.
They said, guys, like, thanks, but no thanks, because Apple's mission is to make magical devices at unbelievable prices. Like, that's what we just do.
You know, that's our thing. Like, these are important issues, but we're going to recommend against this proposal because we don't want to spend tens of millions of dollars hiring Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch to go and do a racial equity audit.
But this passed by 52% to 48% because you had firms like BlackRock, which is the second largest shareholder of the company, voted for it. Vanguard, State Street, everyone else are voting for these issues and forcing corporate America to now get involved in social and political issues.
And this went the same thing for election integrity law issues that people were asking companies to get involved in, defund the police initiatives, help PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. They put up a proposal telling Starbucks, we don't want you to use cow milk anymore because we don't think you should use cow milk at Starbucks.
I mean, it's crazy. All these proposals that popped up in this post sort of COVID George Floyd era.

And companies were essentially forced by these large asset managers to get involved in a lot of political and social issues.

So that was sort of the backdrop.

So can I just give you my theory on this?

Yeah.

There's a backdrop to all of this, which is the movement of the economic center of gravity upward in the United States.

So Obama becomes president in 2008. Middle class is the majority in the United States.
He leaves in 2016. The middle class is no longer the majority for the first time, maybe ever.
And at the same time, we've got free money. We're down to zero interest rates.
And that money is being pumped way disproportionately into a certain sector of the economy, the banking sector. And so basically, most people are getting poorer, but a small number of people are getting way richer.
I mean, it's measurable. I live among them.
Everyone's got a plane now. That was not true in 2008.
They just created a lot of wealth. The Fed created a lot of wealth.
And so in a certain sense, that's like immoral or it's certainly hard to defend. And so rather than defend it, it wasn't the companies that wanted this stuff.
It was the debt holders. It was the finance people who wanted it because it was a cover for what they were doing, which is getting really rich.
Lady Fink got super, super rich. A lot of like manufacturing concerns family businesses went under or did not get rich at the same scale.
And so you just like throw out like race war, you know, hate people because of their, you know, whatever immutable characteristics. Hey, let's throw the trans stuff in there too.
By the way, we're all going to die from global warming. You basically just freak everybody out through the entire society off balance so they don't notice the looting.
Yeah. I mean, that's essentially, I mean, but it about, it's control and money.
I mean, it's control and it's money. I mean, you think about- But all these social issues were always a cover for what was actually going on, which is like Larry Fink getting richer.
Oh, 100%. And it's so funny.
So when he started talking a lot about ESG, environmental social governments in 2018, 2019, all of a sudden they started a scoring system. You know, it's almost like a social credit system you'd have in China or somewhere else.
Scoring companies on how little carbon that they use, or scoring companies on how did they do gender affirmation care for their employees. And these scores were used to essentially pick and choose companies that could be included in indices that Larry Fink and BlackRock and others, they could charge investors three to four times the amount of money for these ESG funds versus the regular funds.
And the funny thing was these ESG funds underperformed their broad-based counterparts. So you ended up with less money, but you were charged more for doing it, which is crazy.
And it's really funny that- So do you think it would, since you've studied this much more than I have, do you think it would be a mistake to think that there was any sincerity behind this?

Like, do you think there was ever a moment where like Larry Fink, or for that matter, Tim Cook,

or anybody at State Street or Vanguard

thought, you know, we're going to solve systemic

racism by attacking the white

working class. Like, we're actually going to solve this problem.

Do you think they really thought that?

I mean, there might have been one or two people there.

But no, I mean, I don't

really think. I think this was all just sort of a money grab and a feel good and being able to go to the right parties in New York City.
That's the way it seems to me, but, you know. I mean, it really is because it just doesn't pass any of the first principle test whatsoever.
And, you know, it's funny, the companies that were the worst, I mean, this tended to be more of a New York City, you know, kind of ideology, also a European ideology as well. I mean, there is some sincerity to it.
I mean, this is funny. You'll appreciate this.
Because I think where we're going with all of this, because you've seen obviously retreat with a lot of companies have backed away from DEI over the last couple of months. There's other companies that are holding on to some vestige of it, but there's others that are really all in on diversity and inclusion.
To this day. You're going to love this.
And the worst are the Europeans because they really, I think, believe in this sort of European stakeholder capitalism model. So you have, I'll give you a plug for Alp right now.
So if you talk about one of the worst companies that's out there is- America's greatest nicotine pouch. America's lip pillow.
But who is your biggest competitor? That would be the Zinn Corporation. Zinn.
Do you know who owns Zinn? I do. So it's Philip Morris International.
Yeah. They are operationally headquartered in Switzerland.
On their website to this day, I mean, you go to their website today, they have a massive diversity, equity, inclusion piece that is on their website. They have the, and I would say it's the, I'll call it the worst aspects of DI, which can be quota systems, race-based systems.

And on their website today, they say, we're going to hire 20% of our people.

We want to be Asian.

Put it on their website, just 20%.

They want 40% women.

I mean, literally quota systems they have on their website today.

It should be 100% African, by the way, if they're really going to make a dent.

But they're racist, so they wouldn't do that.

Yeah, so, I mean, but the other piece is that on their website, and this is a company that makes Marlboro cigarettes and Zin and other things, is, so they're like, one of their big partners for Pride Month that's coming up is the Stonewall Org. And Stonewall Org is one of these LGBTQ plus organizations.
And, you know, fine, you can do that. But like, they are advocating for biological men to compete against women in sports they're advocating zinn is all in on the gay thing i mean but like this is what's crazy is that like and i think this is the problem about where we're going is what does that have to keep that out of my mouth i mean this is like come on so but like this is the problem of i think like where you're seeing trying to serve multiple masters i'm making this up.
You can literally go on their website literally today and see all of this.

And I think that's the problem we're seeing is that you have

these more European-based companies

that I think might sincerely

probably believe a lot of this, or the European mindset,

which is very distinct from sort of the American

capitalist model. Crippled by war guilt,

bent on suicide, yes. Yeah, and

I mean, at least here in the United States and others,

we have a democracy, we can throw people

out if we don't like them, but corporations, I mean, they're transnational organizations. They operated.
With an emphasis on the trans. Yeah, with an emphasis on that.
But they go across borders. And if you are sort of operation philosophically sort of a European-based company, but you have operations in another country and you're imposing those values in another country, I think that's problematic.
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Not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. www.merchantspaymentscoalition.com It does feel like one of these, like in 10 years, we're going to look back and be like, you know, they were major consumer products companies that felt empowered to talk about your sex life and the sex lives of your children i agree back off with the gay stuff by the way just stop like no one's no one hates gays like stop that stop that get out of my face with that stuff yeah like i don't care how people dress i don't care sick of it actually but like it's just insane that like a nicotine pouch company would be lecturing me about people's sex lives like stop i agree and this is the other thing about like authentic yeah authentically what is a you know whatever nicotine pouch cigarette company marble like what are they doing working with organizations i mean another thing is stonewall is like hey we want to do youth sex education if we're lgb how about i get my gun when you do that like stay away from my kids how's that again like just stay i don't understand that like why why any society would put up with it? Why Zin would pay for it? And of course, it's not just Philip Morris International.
It's like so many of these companies. No, it is.
And here's the other thing. It's like, I don't want Philip Morris to do the other stuff.
I don't want them advocating for the Second Amendment either. It's like, you're a cigarette company.
Just do that. Yeah.
Just do that. They don't even sell cigarettes well.
They don't even believe in what they do. Yeah.
So I think what's interesting about where we're going is that you're going to have sort of these companies, you're seeing the same thing with China. I mean, why is TikTok being asked to be sold in the United States? Well, because it's technically owned by a Chinese company and the Chinese values, they're collecting data and information.
That's not going to work for the United States. So they might need to sell it.
That's not why. So they got involved in some, you know, they were considered a vector for unapproved foreign policy positions.
And that's why the Congress did that. And they pretended it was about collecting data.
These are, you know, people who are all in on, you know, warrantless searches of Americans and spying on Americans. And they have no problem with violating your civil liberties at all.
They don't think you have civil liberties, but they were under pressure to ban TikTok because it was considered radicalizing in ways that their donors wouldn't accept. So that's the truth.
Sorry. Got it.
Well, you know, it's... It's never what they say it is.
Never what they say, but I think the broader piece is though, is that whether it's TikTok, whether it's, you know, Zinn in the United States, or Anne has a Bush, which used to be American-owned, I think you're going to have a lot of these companies need to have choices about what they're going to make moving forward. I think it's going to be very difficult to operate in the U.S.
if the U.S. is leaning more in towards these radical ideas of free speech and religion and open dialogue and those things, whereas we've always kind of been a city on the hill in the United States.

We've always been this exceptional difference.

Now more than ever, really.

Probably now more than ever.

I mean, we're almost more isolated than probably we've ever been.

Yes, I think that's right.

The last four or five years, yes, we were going more towards this quasi-European socialism,

government intervention and free speech and everything else.

And we have now rejected that as a country.

But I think what's difficult is that, yes, we've rejected it politically,

but again, corporately, there's all these tethers from around the world because of effects of globalization over the last 20 years that you have a lot of these companies that, frankly, might not hold sort of those same American values. Talk Philip Morris, you know, Anheuser-Busch InBev, based in Europe.
In Europe, they have quota systems for how many board members have to look this way or be that way over in Europe. And one of the reasons that I think, again, going back to the original question, like how did this happen in the United States, right? Bud Light, the biggest beer brand in the United States, how do they have a partnership with Dylan Mulvaney? Well, they I think have a lot of these European type values now, diversity, equity, inclusion.
I'm so grateful for that scandal, for the effects on the company of that scandal and for you writing this this book, and for what you just told me. Because I think most Americans, I'll say myself, I have no idea.
Like, you know, you just use Crest toothpaste. You have no idea what they're sending money to.
I use Zinn for years. I finally realized it was a left-wing company.
I didn't get that at first. But most Americans just don't know what's happening to their money.
No, they don't. And really, I think the eye-opening moment, even for me, where how companies have been co-opt is, I don't know if you meant to have the Black Rifle Coffee Company cup on your- Yeah, yeah.
I love it, Evan. So, I mean, you'll appreciate this story.
And I write about this in my book, Last Call for Bud Light. But one of the opening chapters I have is, so I was president of Anheuser-Busch in the US.
And I tried to do a distribution agreement with Black Rifle Coffee Company. Because a lot of times the same people that were drinking a six pack of Bud Light, you know, Budweiser at night, were drinking six Black Rifle coffees in the morning.
And so we were going to put the Black Rifle Coffee, their kind of 16 ounce drinks, on the same trucks that carry Bud and Bud Light to Walmart and Kroger and 7-Eleven. And so I had this whole deal and we're going to make a bunch of money on that partnership.
And our legal team, which was now based in New York City and our external affairs team based in New York City, this is in 2021, killed the deal. I said, you can't do it.
I was like, what do you mean? Like, here's all the financials. This makes tons of sense.
Like, this is a great company. They're growing like gangbusters.
I said, can't do it. Company's too controversial.
I was like, what do you mean? Controversial? I was like, you know, the company, like their mission is to serve coffee and culture to firefighters, police officers, law enforcement people who love America. And the coffee, just in point of fact, is excellent.
Yeah, great coffee. I drink it every day.
It's great. This is my thing.
I mean, you know, this is, that's their mission. That's what they do.
And, you know, Budweiser, we had partnerships with Folds of Honor and other military. But in 2021, because of the whole DEI movement, which said like, ooh, they fund the police.
And defund the police was a big thing kind of going on at the time. And ooh, military.
I don't know about that. That seems a little bit too controversial.
I'm like, guys, we sell like King Cobra 40-ounce bottles all over the place. America's favorite malt liquor.
What are we talking about? Did you guys make Old English 800? No, we didn't make Old English 800. That was a brand.
I drank that as a kid. That's one of the reasons I no longer drink.
Yeah. Did you ever do the Edward Forty Hands with that one? No, no.
Did you miss the Edward Forty Hands? I did. Everyone beats up on kids for being dumb, but actually, the newer generations are way more brilliant than we ever were.
Edward Fortyhands is like the funniest thing that ever happened. Yeah, Edward Fortyhands was amazing.
Duct tape. I'm against drinking.
I don't know why I'm laughing. I don't drink.
I hate alcohol, but that is hilarious. Duct tape, 240 ounce malt liquor to kids' hands.
That's it. You know, you couldn't untape them until you finished both of them.
I feel guilty for laughing. Yeah, there were too many bad stories.
Like, you know, someone get through one or half of them. Like, you know, you're rumbling around and you fall and it's like, you know, you get glass over.
But anyway, so no, not OE. There were other ones.
Sorry, sorry for the digression. But I can't remember where we were going with that.
Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. No, we so the the deal gets killed and that exact same because it was too controversial of a brand yet a year later that exact same department based in new york city now that killed the black rifle coffee deal they greenlit the dylan mulvaney partnership and the dylan mulvaney partnership like it was incredibly puzzling if you're a bud light drinker and you, you know, again, like, I mean, I don't care how people identify or what they want to do with their lives.
But like, one of the reasons that Bud Light became the biggest, most popular beer brand in the United States is because it was remarkably apolitical. Like it was a brand that was enjoyed by Democrats and Republicans alike, because it was about like fun and it was humor.
It was sort of this like, you know, somewhat, you know, countercultural, you know, type of brand. It was about sports and music and, you know, backyard barbecues.
And all of a sudden the Bud Light had just hired its first, you know, female head of Bud Light in the history of the brand. You know, no problem with that.
I've, you know, I'm sure there'd be, there are a lot of, there are a lot of people that, a lot of girls I know, they'd be great VP of marketers at Bud Light. The problem with it was, the person they hired was a lady who had grown up in New York City, went to Harvard for undergrad, Wharton for grad school, had only lived in basically the Northeast her entire life.
I don't know if she'd ever drank a Bud Light in her life, and I don't know if she ever knew anybody who had as well. And she was very- Why would she make her the head of the brand? Well, because the DEI movement basically said that you need to essentially put different people in different roles.
You need a woman. Yeah, based off immutable characteristics.
And even the 21, 22 timeframe. What was her name? Alyssa Heinerschneid.
And I know Alyssa. I mean, Alyssa, she's, you know, nice girl.
And I worked with her when I was at the company for a while. But she probably wasn't the right person for Bud Light.
Yeah, probably not. Well, she obviously wasn't the right person for Bud Light.
I mean, literally, I can't complain. Probably not.
Almost 50%. So obviously wasn't the right person for the company.
I mean, like tanked the brand. Yeah, probably not.
Almost 50%. So obviously wasn't the right person for the company.
But in this broader kind of narrative in 2021, 2022, this is when I was deciding to kind of like leave Anheuser-Busch. I'd mentioned the black rifle thing was kind of the final sort of last straw for me.
But even before that, the principles of the company changed. My joint was the meritocracy.
It was like, we want to hire the best and brightest and we want to reward them based off their results and pay them accordingly. Great.
But in 21, 22, all of a sudden that principle, there were 10 principles of the company, that one around really hiring the best price changed towards, we now reward people based off the quality and diversity, which was bolded by the company and diversity of your teams. And then all of a sudden the company starts putting in these, you know, diversity dashboards where you can see what the diversity makeup of your team is.
White men did a pretty good job making beer. I think whatever you say about white men, like they created the company, they made the beer, like why we hate them all of a sudden.
They created Budweiser. Well, I think it was just more so that the head scratching piece of like piece of like, you know, it doesn't matter if you're, again, like white or black

or gay or shit. Like, don't care.
I just want the best people.

Right, but the DEI is

the only people discriminated against in DEI

are white men, obviously, straight white men.

So, like, I don't understand.

There are probably some Asians in there, too.

Well, they definitely have.

And a lot of Indians and a lot of other folks as well.

Yeah, 100%. Asians, South Asians.

But the point of it was to reduce the percentage of white men in positions of leadership or with paying jobs.

And I just felt like nobody had the balls to say that out loud.

Like that was considered controversial to say that.

You would get fired if you said that out loud.

It's true.

This was in the 21, 20, 22 timeframe.

But that's the problem with where we were.

I mean, you made this censorship regime.

I mean, heck, you had the Biden administration.

Well, I got fired. I mean, yeah I got fired.
In the end, thank God. But no, yes, I did get fired.
So actually it's kind of. So you remember this.
I do. Yeah, I guess I do.
More so than anybody. But yeah, I mean, you couldn't speak up during this timeframe.
That was the problem. And then at the same time, you had all these companies that made all these pledges.
I mean, the chief diversity officers. Like, this really wasn't even a position before 2020.
Chief diversity. What do you make? I make diversity.
Well, I mean, but this is crazy. Like, you know, and then all of a sudden there was like a 400% increase in chief diversity officer position.
And these were all high six-figure salary positions. All the executive level.
What do you do if you're a diversity officer? This is the problem. You find things to do.
And this was the problem.

So the first thing was the whole pronoun police comes in.

Well, let's be more inclusive of all the pronoun piece.

And then, hey, let's put in quota systems that we're going to put in place.

So we hire a certain number of people with this immutable characteristic or that of characters.

Did everyone buy into the pronoun thing?

Did anyone say I'm not doing that?

Yeah, a lot of people did.

But this is the problem as well.

A lot of people just went along with it because they felt if you didn't, then you could be called out by your HR team. Cowards.
And I think that's what's part of the problem. Now what's nice is that I think people have the ability to say, you know, I'm not going to do that.
But three years ago, you couldn't. Three years ago was.
The whole thing is designed to degrade you. What are you really saying, by the way, if when you announce your pronouns, what you're saying is it's not evident to people watching what your sex is? Yeah.
Like your pat or something from Saturday Night Live. Like, you may not know this, but I'm a man.
Like, you can't tell by looking at me, but I'm actually a man. It's like the most degrading thing I can imagine.
I completely agree. And I don't know.
And if you're unsure, just ask, how are you doing? That's it. And you don't even have to use a pronoun if you're unsure.
But I think for 99% of the time, you're pretty sure. And that's the problem.
It's forcing these sort of agenda on 99% of the population. Wait a minute, what is this? I didn't know what this was.
But the people who work there, I mean, now I'm being mean, but I've lived it, so I feel it. Like, there were so few noble, honest, brave people in American corporate culture that I was shocked.
I was shocked by what sheep they were. You'd think at least 20% and be like, buzz off.
I'm not giving you my... That's disgusting.
This is insane. And by the way, you're discriminating against white men, which is illegal and immoral.
And we've got this monument on the mall from Luther King telling us you can't do that, but you're doing it anyway in his name. You know, why don't you go screw yourself actually? I don't think anybody said that.
There were a couple brave people. How disappointing.
But the brave people who stuck their neck out, I mean, they were eviscerated in the media. The first guy actually was Brian Armstrong.
He was the CEO of Coinbase. I don't know if you remember this.
I remember very well. And this is at the end of 2020.
I mean, right after all of the BLM and everything. And Brian Armstrong said, listen, I'm not going to tie it to the BLM movement.
I'm not going to make a statement that we're in support of BLM. I'm not going to do that either.
He said, because the mission of our company Coinbase is to bring crypto to the masses. That's what we're doing.
And if there's something related to crypto regulation or policy, sure, we'll have a view on that. But am I going to have a view on climate change or BLM issues or transgender policy? No, I'm not.
And by the way, if you as an employee don't want to be here, then go work somewhere else. And I think they had, I don't know, 50 employees or something locked out, but then he had 5,000 people that applied to work there.
But in the media, though, he was called bigoted and he was called racist and he was called, you name it, all in the media because of him just having a view that says, I'm just not going to do this because that's not important to the company. And if I want people to come here and work for our mission, not necessarily for all these orthogonal things that have nothing to do with the masses.
It's funny how much just telling the story would, I mean, of course, I remember when it happened. I defended him when it happened, but it seems like you're talking about a different country.
Things have changed so much. So much.
That's my perception. Is it yours? It is.
Things have definitely swung back. But as I mentioned earlier, it's almost as if we're going into, I would say it's almost three camps with the purpose of business in this country and business getting involved in social, political, ESGDI topics.
You have the people that have backed off because they've said, you know what? Getting involved in a lot of these political and social issues, it wasn't good for my company from the stock standpoint. It wasn't because I lost money or divided my customer base.
It wasn't really good for the country either. You've seen Meta and McDonald's and Walmart and Google.
A lot of people have rolled back a lot of those policies. You have a second group of companies that are trying to kind of rebrand the whole sort of DEI narrative.
They haven't realized it's become a pejorative term to the majority of Americans. They're calling it inclusivity, inclusivity and belonging, or I don't know, all these other words they're trying to mash together.
I would put probably more the JP Morgans and I don't know, those folks in that boat. But then you have the real adherence.
And these are the people that Philip Morris Internationals. Even today, I mean, Anheuser-Busch InBev on their website for the UK, the big DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion piece, because I think you do have these real adherence.
And then even certain companies in the United States, I mean, Costco is doubling down big time. I think partly because they're based in Seattle.
And because I think- Costco? Costco has doubled down big time. That's like a warehouse store where you buy stuff by the pallet kind of thing? That's it.
That place has doubled down massively, talking about that we're going to continue to have quota systems about who we actually give preferential treatment to, to who gets their products in store based off race or sex or gender. Yeah, they've been doubling down on this.
So they're one of the companies that has kind of dug their heels in. I hope they go out of business soon.
So, but it's really interesting. So I, and the way that I think about it, I think the companies that have just moved on, I think we need to get more to a, I'll go back to a corporate pluralism of whatever your mission is as a company, just do that.
And however you need to recruit people, you know, the best and brightest to your industry, figure out how to do that. I would say probably move on from the DEI.
Yeah, and I don't think we can say that the United States is civil rights law at that point. If you're openly discriminating against people on the basis of their race, then all the Civil Rights Act, it's all bullshit.
None of that means anything.

And so like, let's just stop pretending.

Okay, so if Costco wants to continue with racist policies, then I guess everyone gets to have racist policies if they want on whatever basis of any race they want.

Like, you know what I mean?

It's a principle.

So either you're against and in fact banning through federal law discrimination on the basis of any race they want. You know what I mean? It's a principle.
So either you're against, and in fact banning through federal law, discrimination on the basis of race, or you're not. Yeah, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it literally says you cannot discriminate based on race, sex, gender, national origin, etc.
And a thousand subsequent laws and regulations underscore that point. And this is funny.
Actually, the Senate floor manager at the time was Hubert Humphreys, who became Lennon Johnson's VP. He was one who was ushering through the Civil Rights Act 1964.
He said, this is his quote, says, if this leads to quota systems, I will eat my hat. This was his quote.
And that's exactly what we got. He's been dead too long to do it.
Yeah, no, it kind of wrecked the country. Burma Washington is terrified and distraught by the Trump revolution now in progress.

And it is a revolution.

And it's unfolding along very familiar lines. The White House is now giving voters what they actually want and what they've wanted for a long time.
And that's the one thing that Permanent Washington doesn't want to give them. They are working to stop it.
Fortunately, our friends at Heritage, the Heritage Foundation in D.C., are fighting back. They've spent years thinking this through.
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And based on the sunny, cheerful faces of the people I work with, it works. It's inexpensive.
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You can check it out on their website, sambrosa.com. Well, so just back to Anheuser-Busch.
This disaster happens, and it seems to be, I mean, according to the video that everybody saw, really a product of this one decision well it's the end of a chain of a lot of decisions as you so a lot of bad decisions ably described but but the key decision in the fall of bud light was by this alissa schneinhauser whatever her name was um who went to harvard and there's this famous video where She's saying, know basically i think the old white guys who drink our beer could use to be shaken up a little bit the fratty and out of touch that bud light's been fratty and out of sorry fratty and out of touch yeah and i just have to say i mean she didn't run the company she's head of the brand she has supervisors if someone who worked for me well we we sell alp and. And if someone's in a meeting with me, the problem with Alp is its users suck.
And they've got antique retrograde attitudes, and we just need to give them the finger. I would say, you're fired because you don't love our people.
That's it. Exactly.
Why did no one say that? But that's what's crazy is that she literally called the customer base, you know, the fratty out of touch. And like, you know, immediately lost trust with the whole entire customer base.
And what are you guys talking about? And do people like to be lectured? I love it. Yailed at by Alyssa Schneidhauser from Harvard? And what's crazy about this is the timeline of events was, because we're coming up on actually two years when this happened.
So this partnership with, that Bud Light did with Dylan Mulvaney and controversial transgender activists happened on April Fool's Day of 2023.

So, and a lot of people originally thought this was a joke of like, oh, this is like Bud Light must be joking about this. Because there's no way that they would ever do a partnership with somebody who was literally just at Joe Biden's White House advocating for gender affirmation care and biological men competing against women in in sports but this is all of a sudden bud lights in a partnership with this like i don't understand this then two or three days later that video comes out of alissa essentially being like bud light is fratting out of touch we're going to be ready and out of touch and we're going to be more inclusive what that's probably that's a problem alissa was out of touch i mean this is who's out of touch i mean that's some self-awareness honey that's i mean it's crazy with what's going on i mean this is what this is how out of touch.
I mean, this is who's out of touch. Get some self-awareness, honey.
It's crazy with what's going on. I mean, this is how out of touch, I think, a lot of the people in New York became.
Where all of a sudden, they're saying, you know, no, no, no, our customers are out of touch. We need new customers and the new customers are going to be whoever follows Dylan Mulvaney on Instagram, which I think was actually mostly like underage girls.
Because there were literally all of these now investigations going on saying, wait a minute, you guys sponsor the Mulvaney who just has a bunch of underage followers? Like, what are you guys doing? This makes no sense. Dressed like a child? Yeah.
Some dude dressed like a little girl? First of all, who's looking into that guy's personal life? You know, like, that's dark. Yeah.
But anyway. So the partnership itself was obviously incredibly flawed is it true that dylan mulvaney is like a huge zinn user someone told me that he loves in i don't know i've never met dylan i don't know if that's true or not do you think you should have dylan on the show so you can figure it out you know what you should i keep hearing and i have no idea if it's true i'm not endorsing this but that philip morris and zinn are hiring dylan mulvaney i don't know if that's true i I don't know.
I mean, based off what I saw on their website, it would make perfect sense. I mean, they're almost becoming the Ben and Jerry's of- 100%.
I mean, that's what it is. And actually, you know what? That's fine.
I don't want that in my mouth. Okay? I just don't.
You know what? I actually respect Ben and Jerry's as a brand because they at least stand. They're very clear about what they stand for.
I completely agree. They say, we're going to use ice cream to advance a socially progressive mission.
Great. Hey, in this country, you can do that.
If there's a customer base for that, go do that. I couldn't agree more.
I find their ideas repugnant, but I respect their bravery and their principle. Their ice cream is unbelievable.
I'm going to get diabetes if I eat it again. But it's really good.
And they're consistent in their views. And I appreciate that.
But a company like Zinn or ab like you had no idea that they were you know spending money on causes that were like you know in direct conflict with your own family these people hate your family and you're buying their products and this was the whole deal so like obviously the partnership itself made no sense but the response to it was just as harmful and that was just as problematic really because if you recall that that there was, so, you know, Alyssa goes on the TV where she's fratty out of touch. Kid Rock then lights up a pack of Bud Light with an AR-15, which was a big deal.
So then all of a sudden you have all of these sort of people saying, you know, screw Bud Light, people posting videos of them not buying it. And then the company said, hey, there was a quick press release saying, yes, we do partnerships with influencers to celebrate milestones.
In this case, we did this milestone of 365 days of womanhood. And everyone's like, what are you talking about? Bud Light? It's a dude, by the way.
These are not women. These are men dressed as women.
The whole thing is so insulting. And in the same way, you probably wouldn't at that time have sent a candid Donald Trump to celebrate his coming.
100%. Because Bud Light was not a political brand.
And so everyone's really confused. And so the sales just tumble.
And what's really— Was that obvious right away? So, yeah. So this is what's really interesting.
It's like boycotts tend to work for two reasons. And they actually had never worked almost in history.
Everyone talks about, I hate when the NFL had the whole kneeling thing going on, but NFL ratings were super high. Other people called a boycott coming home it's never worked but in this case it worked for two reasons one if there's a easily accessible substitute so if you think about everywhere you could buy bud light you have coors light you have miller light i mean you go to gas station you have coors light six packs miller light six packs bud light six packs yeah and then you also you go to bar you have miller light on tap you have bud light on tap and for 95 of americans i mean, Bud Light is indistinguishable from Coors Light and from Miller Lite.
So the substitutes are easily there. Do you know, I quit drinking before light beer was a thing.
I never have had a light beer in my life. Men just did not drink light beer when I quit drinking.
Is it good? Bud Light? Yeah, I've never had a Bud Light. Yeah, I mean, like, yeah.
But if you like light beer, I mean, it's a great light beer. It's very consistent.
They have great brewmasters. They have, so it's very good as a product.
But so also is Coors and Miller Lite. But it's almost like a commodity of a brand.
So therefore, the only thing you actually did have was your brand itself, which Bud Lights was funny, humorous, and apolitical. The other reason that boycotts work is that if you actually feel like you're having an impact and having an effect.
And the other thing that happens, which is interesting in the beer industry is every week, you get data that's reported by Walmart and Kroger and 7-Eleven and- You're big retailers. All these big retailers about what sales look like.
And that's just reported every week. Usually, people don't care about that at all.
I mean, no one ever cares what the real sales are. But in this instance, all of a sudden, the media was reporting every single week that Bud Light sales were down 10%, 20%, 30%.
So it snowballs. So it starts snowballing.
And in Anheuser-Busch, they can't starve the media of information and data. And so all of a sudden, like Anheuser-Busch is watching their sales decline a lot.
And they realize, wow, we got to do something. The problem was they always say they're stuck between this, you know, the blackRock and a hard place.
You know, it's BlackRock for saying, hey, you guys need more DEI and inclusivity. And that's the agenda we're pushing.
There are corporations like the Human Rights Campaign that scores Anheuser-Busch every single year on there. Why would a beer company, I mean, the Human Rights Campaign are freaks.
I mean, they're literally freaks and they're evil, completely evil, in my opinion. It's not about equality.
It's about crushing families and Christianity, obviously. So why would a beer company care what they think? Well, because the problem was, again, BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, who are technically these large shareholders of your business, they have adopted ESG and DI.
And they're saying, if you want to get included in our ESG indexes, or Mike Bloomberg, Bloomberg has a gender equality index. If you want to get included in these, you guys need to have a perfect score on the human rights campaign.
Man, if I'm the Chinese, I'm encouraging this a lot. A hundred percent.
Because you just wreck your opponent with this stuff. I mean, it's insane.
It made no sense. And when the human rights campaign started, I don't know, 20 years ago, the whole thing was like, okay, I don't know, don know, don't make fun of like, I don't know, LGBTQ plus.
Okay, fine. I was never against human rights campaign.
I worked like a block from them for 15 years in downtown D.C. on 17th Street.
I was never against them at all. I was like, okay, I'm for civil liberties, including for gays.
I'm not against that at all. I'm for it.
But it became incredibly rigid. It wasn't about that at all.
It was about destroying American society, which they have done a lot to achieve. And now to get these perfect scores, then you had to have so many commercials that advertised to LGBT plus.
You had to do all the gender affirmation stuff in your health care policy. You got to sell gay beer.
I mean, that was essentially like what it was becoming. And even the company itself, I mean, they were trying to win these like con line awards over in Europe.
And so we used to always think like our advertisement was, did you win the USA Today's Super Bowl ad meter award? That showed like you were in touch with the kind of American consumer. And for, I mean, from like 2003 to 2013, Andersen Bush won it every single year.
Then when they brought in new European ownership and new marketers, all of a sudden they didn't win it for 10 plus years. And what they tried now start winning and showing they won these con-line awards, which over in Europe, they have these awards in con-France.
And to win the con-line advertising awards, you have to have your DEI and your ESG policies and you have to do all of the advertisements that are essentially... You sell beer.
Why do you care about an award in con-France? That's it. You shouldn't.
You shouldn't. But again, to get included in the BlackRock State Street Vanguard indexes for ESGDI, you can highlight your awards that you won from ConLion.
You can highlight your perfect score from the Human Rights Campaign. You can highlight your...
So these are just all control mechanisms run by people like Larry Fink, like the worst people in the world. I mean, there was a whole...
I call it the stakeholder capitalism industrial complex. And everybody was just trying to make money.
McKinsey, they were the big consulting firm. I mean, they had this, again, this diversity matters, diversity wins report to sell consulting services for DEI.
BlackRock had a whole DEI component to put people into certain funds to charge investors more money. You had a lot of activists that they wanted to show that they could get more money from Soros or whoever else that they're making progress by putting up actually activist proposals at companies that shareholders would then vote on.
So it was this big almost like industrial complex just kept feeding on itself. To destroy the meritocracy and destroy the United States.
I mean, essentially, like that's where we were going. It destroys the country.
If you don't have a meritocracy, if the best people can't rise because of the wrong color or the wrong sex, then your country collapsed. And almost, I mean, Bud Light was essentially

holding the pin

when this whole,

I mean, bubble popped.

They were,

this was the first time

that people saw like,

wait a minute, you know,

okay, I didn't like

when Disney got involved

in the parental rights issues

down in Florida,

but, you know,

Disney's always kind of

a little out there.

And it didn't make any sense

that Disney was getting involved

in this year.

Well, it's the same attitude,

same.

But kind of same attitude.

Yeah.

But the problem with Disney

is that, okay, you know, I don't like Disney, but there's only one Disney World. I don't really have a lot of other places to go so i'm still gonna go disney but with bud light people would easily went to course light yeah light and so going back to this whole story about why the response was so damaging so all the can i just ask yeah since you worked there and you've written a book on it yeah and i i left by this point so right of know the business.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. What's the right, before you explain what they did, what's the right answer? So you're running Anheuser-Busch right now.
This happens. It's a huge threat to your core business, which is selling beer.
Yeah. What do you do? I mean, the answer is so simple.
The first thing you do is that you fire the VP of marketing, who just called your entire customer base frting out of touch. And then you say we fired her because that was obviously not, not empathetic to our customers and not quarter business.
You hate our customers. You can't work here.
You can't work here. Like just like, like fair done, like out.
And then separately, like the biggest piece is like, then you just apologize. You know, I always say it's like the, like the, the, the, the, the path.
Apologize. You know, it's like, but it's like, it's like the path to like, I always say like redemption, it goes through forgiveness, but the only way you're going to be forgivenologize! What are you, crazy? But it's like the path to, like, I always say,

redemption goes through forgiveness. Amen.

But the only way you're going to be forgiven is if you admit

you made a mistake. Exactly.
And then what you say

is like, hey, this was obviously a mistake

that this person made, and so we've moved on

from this person, because we've made a mistake hiring this

person, putting them in. And then, separately,

also, we made a mistake as Bud Light.

We made a mistake because Bud Light was never

supposed to be involved in controversial political issues, and Dylan Mulvaney was not the right choice of a person to get involved with because there are things, if you recall as well, the week this partnership happened, this was during the time when a lot of legislation is in session. So there were, I think, 25 bills across the country to ban biological men from playing against women in sports.
There was a bunch of bills banning gender affirmation care. And also leading up to this week, that was the week that you had the transgender shooter in the Christian school in Tennessee.
Yeah, whose manifesto we weren't allowed to see. Right, exactly.
So, I mean, this was like a very big issue across the entire country right now. It's a violent group.
So this is why there was a lot of problems with Dylan Mulvaney, who had become kind of the face of really the very progressive transgender movement, why Bud Light never should have done the partnership in the first place. And say, because Bud Light was always about fun and music and sports, we should have never had this person as a sponsorship.
Again, they shouldn't have Donald Trump as a sponsor either. Of course, I agree.
Just so Bud Light now— You sell beer. Just sell your beer.
We're going to get back to selling beer. Guys, we screwed up.
We apologized. We want our customers back.
We're selling beer. End of story.
The problem is they couldn't do that because they'd made all these other commitments to the Human Rights Campaign, who they highlighted every single year in their annual ESG report that they had a perfect score on it. They had made...
But the Human Rights Campaign is like... They're not big shareholders of AB.
No, but... They have no right to run a beer company.
But they're a stakeholder of AB and that becomes the problem. You have all...
They have no like moral legitimacy. Even if you love the human rights campaign, which is totally evil, just that's my opinion, having known them.
But even if you love them, why do they get a veto over the behavior of like a huge publicly traded company? It's just like crazy. It all just feeds on itself.
It's called the stakeholder capitalism industrial complex. The stakeholder really the beer drinkers.
But that's the problem. That became the least.
We can insult them. Your customer became sort of the lowest priority, which is the problem.
This made no sense. It made zero sense.
And then so, so again, this partnership usually happened on April 1st. On April 15th, that's when you have the CEO for the first time, a guy named Brendan Whitworth, who I know very well.
He made a first public essentially response. And it's almost this comical letter.
I think it was called like our letter to America or something. We never acknowledged the situation they were in.
They never acknowledged the controversy, never mentioned Dylan by name. It was just a, hey, we're going to get back to brewing beer.
And here's a video of some Clydesdale riding across America. And as you can imagine, the outrage was palpable, both on the right from their local customers that were like, wait a minute, we wanted that exact kind of apology.
And hey, we fired the person I just gave. But then now you have all these people on the left that are saying, wait a minute, I wanted you guys to see you're going to become like Ben and Jerry's.
You know, I want you guys to be doing more of the Dylan campaign. And so all of a sudden, the company actually, its sales declined even more.
And funny enough. Is he still there? He's still there, which is crazy.
Everyone is still there. There's been zero accountability for this.
Despite the fact. I don't understand.
So, you know, I don't know the guy. I've met him and talked to him former ca guy he told me yeah right um extremely physically fit as a big crossfit guy most ceos i've met and particularly the more disconnected from manufacturing they are the more finance oriented they are the better physical condition they're in just cut jaw lines they all play lacrosse at middlebury Middlebury.
They're always on the vertical. The guy looks like G.I.
Joe. A hundred percent.
I'm not against physical fitness. I could use a little more myself.
But that doesn't seem like a relevant criterion if you're choosing a CEO and yet every... Larry Fink is kind of pudgy, so I'm on his side for that.
But it feels like whoever's doing the hiring here is doing it based on appearance. And these are white people mostly, so it's not DEI exactly, but it is a form of DEI.
Like why? Like that guy seemed like every other CEO I've met in the last 10 years. Vapid.
Afraid. Completely terrified.
You could smell the fear on the guy. Obsessed with his physical appearance.
And totally lacking creativity. Are those descriptions that was just my reaction from spending an evening with him that's amazing i mean you you spent one evening with him i spent i don't know i've known brendan for 10 years i'm not saying he's like a terrible person i i'm sure you know i i don't know that but i but he is definitely and i hate to single him out though he's a former cia guy yeah which should be disqualifying right there.
But, oh, I'm sorry. But, like, he seemed emblematic of an entire class of people who, in my pretty extensive experience around them, are deeply unimpressive.
Like, I would not hire any of them to do anything in my life. I mean, I think the bigger piece is just, it's the lack of courage.
And I think we saw this with a lot of CEOs. And I think especially with Brendan Ware.
So he reported into a global CEO, which is this guy, Michel Ducaris, who's European and kind of. I'm sure he's a good guy.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, and I think this is, again, the bigger. Some like French mastermind.
But it's a little bit of that where Brendan all of a sudden, like, he needed to take a hard stand and say, you know what? We screwed up. We're firing this person.
We apologize. We're gonna get back to doing Bud Light commercials that are, you know, fun and humorous, whatever else.
And he didn't do it. And he didn't do it that first time in April.
There was another really- But so how does he keep his job? Well, I'll get back to that in a second. But then like, this was really telling.
There was, going into July 4th weekend of 2023. This is the biggest beer selling weekend of the year.
Bud Light sales had tanked down 30, 40%. The stocks lost $40 billion in market cap.
The business had gone from making $6 billion. It lost how much? It lost $40 billion of market cap.
$40 billion? $40 billion of market cap. I mean, the stock was around $70 a share when this happened.
It went down to $40 billion. So how can this Elisa chick and the CIA dude still, I mean, how could they ever work again in American business? $40 billion? You'll love this.
Alyssa was placed on leave at some point along this. She's actually now working for Liv in the Liv Tour, the Saudi Golf Tour.
Not really. I swear to God.
I feel like you can't make this up. Actually? I swear to God.
Yeah, I swear to God. So it's at least under LinkedIn.
It's working for the Live Society Golf Tour. So anyway, we can get to that in a second.
So we'll get to that in a second. But so going to July 4th, week of 2023, for the first time, Brendan goes on national TV and he goes on CBS and he has this live interview where he's going to try and get this back on track because he's now missed twice with a response and it's only antagonized people and things have gotten worse.
So he goes on CBS and one of the hosts, first off, says, hey, thank you for being here because most people in your seat, they would run for the hills. I mean, after what we've seen with millions of customers losing, leaving you, billions of dollars being lost.
But they say, hey, the question everyone wants to know is, was this partnership a mistake and would you do it again? And he gives some real wishy-washy, mealy-mouthed answer. Well, there's a lot of things going on in the world and culture and this and that.
And after 30 seconds of kind of wavering around, the host comes back and says, to be clear, like you do realize the answer you just gave is the reason why millions of people have left, billions of dollars have been erased. Let me ask again, was this campaign a mistake? And would you do it again? And again, he gives a completely evasive $40 billion loss.
And he can't say it's a bad idea. Can't say it's a bad idea.
And what's crazy is that literally that exact same week, Dylan, and I only, I can't, I feel bad for Dylan in this whole thing because Dylan essentially comes out and says, hey, if you can't stand by like a transgender person, then don't do the campaign. Don't do it.
You know, that's worse than not hiring somebody at all, but like, just don't do it. And so Dylan essentially said it was a mistake because they couldn't stand by it.
Larry Fink that week at the Aspen Ideas Festival says, I'm not using the term ESG anymore because it's become too controversial and it's lost its meaning. And you have this now CEO of one of the most iconic companies in the United States, Anheuser-Busch, can't make a direct response about a campaign that has cost this company billions of dollars, millions of customers.
They had to fire thousands of employees after this. Suppliers shut down.
But not the CIA guy. He kept his job.
But he's kept his job still. I mean, he's still kept his job.
I don't understand that. Does the company have a board? Well, there's a problem, but it's a European-based board.
So it's based over in Europe. It's based in Belgium.
They still abide by a lot of these different philosophy. And this is where we're coming into an issue.
So what's the point of having a head of the company, a president of the company? If you're just going to be a puppet. That's the problem.
And that's where I almost think that for a lot of companies, I think, and specifically, I think the company's actually better off probably selling its U.S. business unit at this point.
Because I don't think you can serve this European system. But it's so damaged.
Well, it is, but I think people love a great American comeback story. I agree.
They do. But to make that story, you have to admit again that there was a mistake and that you screwed up and that you've taken accountability for it.
And that we now have a different plan. It doesn't matter how much money the company has subsequently spent on, I mean, it's $100 million for Dana White and the UFC.
They've hired Shane Gillis. They've hired Peyton Manning.
They've done all these things to try and get their customer back. But all the customer wants is like, guys, let's say you screwed up.
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Oh, totally. It just feels like that's a correct...
I use Alp from the second I wake up to the second I go to bed. That's what happened.
That's why we own the company, because I love it. And I think if you don't have that spirit, if the head of Philip Morris doesn't even smoke Marlboro Reds, get out.
I totally agree. If you're embarrassed of what you do, don't do it.
I completely agree. I mean, the Budweiser, they said they almost had Budweiser in their veins.
I think there was a whole story that when you're born, they literally give you a thimble of Budweiser. It's like the first thing I think you drink.
And if you've got a problem with it, don't work there. That's it.
Why is that hard? If you go to church and like the priest is like, well, actually I'm an atheist. It's like, okay, I'm not saying you should go to jail for atheism, but I don't think you should be preaching in a church.
Yeah, shouldn't be here. Yeah.
So completely agree. And I think that's one of the problems that we have is that even here, and there's a bunch of other brands as well.
I mean, like Jeep's another great one. Jeep's owned by now Stellantis, which is based over in the Netherlands.
And you're talking about, man, if you're going to have an American brand like Jeep, should that really be owned by the Europeans? If they just have a completely different philosophical. And they just have the European mindset.
This is very different. Like tiny little electric cars, little gay cars.
It's so weird. You might be seeing a little mini Jeep.
I have an eight-year-old daughter. She used to have one of those like Barbie Jeeps.
Like a big Jeep, a little Stonewall Jeep. No, it's like, that's fine.
I mean, I'm not like, go make a Stonewall Jeep if you want, but like, there should be just like a regular Jeep too. Yeah.
And that's okay. And give that customer that regular Jeep as well.
And so, I don't know. This is where I think also these companies also need to go to.
Actually, another company that actually did like a pretty good job of navigating a lot of the cultural wars. They actually have Netflix a lot of credit.
If you remember, there was two or three years ago, Netflix getting a lot of pressure to cancel Dave Chappelle. Remember when there was this Dave Chappelle special? Well, they wanted to cancel Dave Chappelle.
Well, a lot of other people wanted to cancel Dave Chappelle because he had jokes about the LGBTQ and a million other communities, by the way. I mean, Dave Chappelle doesn't leave anybody unscathed.
And there was a lot of pressure. He was tough on the trans thing, though.
He's like, this is not right. I mean, he like...
Yeah, he was tough on that. He wasn't just mocking.
He was like, men cannot become women, period. Sorry.
I'm a Muslim. I'm not doing this.
But, you know, that's... Hey, it's freedom of speech in the country.
I agree. No, I'm 100% on Dave Chappelle's side.
I'm just saying it was more than just a joke. Like, he was serious about it, I think.
Yeah, but the thing I at least give Netflix credit for is when all of this was going on, they were told to cancel Chappelle, they came out with this Culture of Excellence document. And this Culture of Excellence document essentially said, like, we are not going to censor artists at Netflix.
We are going to put out content for liberals, conservatives, whatever you kind of name it, and people will watch whatever they want to watch. But we are not going to censor it at Netflix.
And if you have an issue with that, then go work somewhere else. And I should give Netflix a lot of credit for that

because they're based in California

and everything else.

And that's great.

They play the Obamas.

Yeah, that's it.

Play that.

But then also,

well, I guess it was Amazon

that picked up the Melania Trump deal.

But great.

Put it all out there.

I mean, who cares?

America's watched whatever they want.

And so I give them a lot of credit for that.

I think that that's also where

Anheuser-Busch kind of needs to go as well.

It's just say, listen,

we have a whole portfolio of beers. I mean, hell, we have King Cobra 40-ounce bottles.
That is for a certain person. But then we also have craft breweries like Goose Island.
So they make King Cobra 40s. And again, I don't drink.
I'm opposed to alcohol. But I love that I live in a country that still makes King Cobra 40s.
I do, I do. I can't help it.
And I assume that is, I assume they weren't pushing Dylan Mulvaney on King Cobra drinkers. No, they were not putting on King Cobra.
That would be hilarious. That would be awesome.
That would be amazing. Bring that back.
A pin-up of Dylan Mulvaney on a King Cobra. If Alyssa Schopenhauer or whatever her name is, I think King Cobra drinkers are out of touch.
That would take some balls. Yeah, that would.
That'd be amazing. That would take some balls.
That'd take some balls. So, yeah, but they also have Goose Island.
And Goose Island in Chicago, they have a Sounds Queer I'm In IPA. And fine, you're in Chicago, and that's what people want.
Great. Give them to those folks for your craft beers as well.
I've never had it. I don't know.
There's a beer advocate thing that uses one of these websites that rates beers. They say it's great.
So, great. They can do that as well.
You know what's good, by the way, I haven't had a beer in almost 25 years, but someone, the head of the athletic brewing company, which is not a sponsor of the show, by the way. Yeah.
He just sent me a couple cases of it. Have you ever had that? Oh, yeah.
I have it in my, I actually traded emails. That's the best thing I've ever had.
It's great. So I like it a lot.
I actually traded emails with Bill Schufeld,

who's the CEO.

That's exactly right.

What a good guy.

Yeah, great guy.

So it's funny because he's done an amazing job

and I respect the company.

The product is just so good.

The product is very good.

Great product.

I wrote a post.

He got almost a billion dollar valuation

for this company in his latest round.

And I just disagreed with the valuation.

I do some consumer investing.

So I wrote a post about like, hey, great job. Kudos, congratulations.
Here's why I don't think it's going to be a $3 billion company. He had some issues with my post.
But I said, hey, I respect what you've done. And I just don't think you're going to be a $3 billion company.
I don't know anything about it. I like him.
Nice guy. Again, they are not sponsors of this show, but he's totally focused on the product.
Yeah, that's it. Like, he just thinks it's the best product ever.
He just thinks it's amazing, and he's right. It is.
Yeah, it's a great product. It tastes just like regular beer.
I think it's better than why I haven't had a beer in a while, but it's really good. I had four at dinner the other night.
Yeah, they're great. Which ones do you have? Probably not good for me.
I don't know. He sent me all kinds of different...
One was called Tucker called tucker actually oh really yeah it was i think it was a wheat beer it was the least good but they were all they're amazing yeah it has opened up what his non-alcoholic beer you see i mean it was terrible and they're really like never had one it was so bad felt so it was kind of a joke now that feels like a dylan mulhanie segment you know what i mean like go ahead dylan you love that's what it. That was essentially what non-alcohol beer was.
And he totally just reframed what it can be, where it can be good, cool. You have it after a run.
You feel better. Like actually delicious.
Actually delicious. And there's this whole movement now.
I mean, it's crazy. Even though I'm categorized as a millennial, I like to identify as the greatest generation here, Tucker, but I take it as categorized as a millennial.
But my cohort, I think 80% of us used to drink alcohol when we were in our 20s. And now that Gen Z is in their 20s, only 60% of them is drinking alcohol at this point.
Yes. I mean, there's been a massive drop off in the number of people drinking alcohol.
And then across all cohorts, Gen Z, millennial, Gen X, boomers, everyone's generally drinking less also because people are just becoming more health conscious. So he's doing a great job of picking up a lot of those people that still like the taste of beer or the occasion of beer but they just don't want to drink a six pack of beer and feel like trash forget how good hops are yeah hops are amazing and um hops exist for a lot of reasons but one is to counterbalance the taste of alcohol because alcohol does not taste good right you take the alcohol out the hops just pardon the pun flour yeah into this amazing now i'm getting very out of control but like this bouquet of flavor yeah i'm getting very delimitant now but like yeah and actually beer compliments food a lot better than wine does because it's so diverse because you have lagers and porters and stouts and ipas usually with wines you kind of red and white and that's about it um but there it actually does a much better job with food have you ever seen um elissa schopenhauer or whatever her name is elissa german name from harvard and then cia guy ceo have you ever seen them drink beer at lunch um probably not at lunch i don't know i feel uh brennan was more of like a you know he would drink budweiser like here and there maybe one or or so, but I think he was much more into the, you know, muscle milk.
And that was kind of his, you know, his thing. So come on now.
But I, I don't know, man. And again, it's, it's, I, Brendan should have been more courageous.
Um, I don't know. Like the guy, he took a company that was doing $6 billion of profits and now doing $4 billion of profits.
I mean, just there, you've lost $2 billion. You're still here.
That's the problem.

What is that?

Yeah, it's just- Oh, you say like, okay, he's a puppet.

He's clearly a puppet and he's terrified.

And again, I don't mean to attack him personally,

though of course I am,

but I'm sure he's not a bad guy.

I'm sure his wife and kids like him.

But it does seem like the people pulling his puppet strings,

that's obviously true.

Yeah. They have an interest in making money.
Like I don't understand the total lack of accountability in corporate america yeah so i no one's ever fired it it's like the u.s military well but i think this is this part of it again when you're controlling this european corporation i think they're doing a good thing by trying to get involved in pushing more of the the political issues also i think there's something to be said is that when you i don't reach a certain level of wealth and money and you're you know billionaire're a billionaire type class, you want to be part of the right social circles and the right scene. That's it.
And I think that's part of it because the whole company is more controlled by these Belgian families and a couple of Brazilian families as well. And now their kids are on the board.
And I think it's just being in the right social circles. I bet their kids are pretty great, right? I've never met them.
Billionaire kids. Let's put some billionaire kids on the board.
Let's get James Murdoch on the board. That's it.
He's a genius. So this is the bigger issue.
And then what's even funny about Brendan, I mean, you almost feel bad for Dylan, but you almost feel bad for Brendan because Kid Rock actually went on Rogan's show. And essentially, he had a big conversation with Brendan as well.
And he was talking about how he's, you know, Kid Rock was making fun of him for the whole CBS interview he did. And he's like, I don't get it, man.
Like, why did you just get up there and you were like a puppet? And essentially this Kid Rock's words and telling the story was like, Brennan said he was coached. He was like, yeah, I was coached.
I had to say what I had to say. Like, that's what's problematic.
And again, this is where you come back to this fundamental, just like disconnect between the American sort of way and American business and the European way. He was essentially coached by the board.
But it doesn't work. No one is served.
So you have to ask, like, what actually is this? So the company's not served. Its employees are not served.
Its consumers are not served. Poor Brendan, who's just like a hapless bystander to his own life, guzzling muzzle milk and hitting the elliptical.
He's not, he's humiliated. And then the shareholders lose $2 billion a year.
So like, who is winning here? And you've got to think that maybe this is part of a bigger play to destroy the West. I mean, I've thrown that out there.
I mean, who's winning? It's, again, I think a lot of the board members. China's winning.
China's probably winning in this thing. I don't know if this is like as much of a...
China is winning. I don't know if they have much to do with this.
I think it's more of this, again, out of touch. But all this stuff, the Black Lives Matter helped zero black people except the ones who stole the money from apple except the the big lavish mansions exactly no but it didn't help black people i'm all for helping i'm all for helping everybody okay but it didn't help black people it didn't help you know kenosha wisconsin which is destroyed never will be rebuilt didn't help all the hispanic families who live in kenosha it didn't help anybody actually it didn't help anybody trans how many happy trans people are there zero that does not help actually it just denies people grandchildren it's I don't know it's hard to see who the winners are like in an armed robbery there's the victim there's a liquor store owner okay he gets shot but then the guy who takes his money gets the money yeah so he wins.
So like, I'm not endorsing that, of course, but there's a liquor store owner okay he gets shot but then the guy who takes his money gets the money yeah so he wins so like i'm not endorsing that of course but there's a logic to it but some of the biggest social trends in the united states don't seem to have any winners and that freaks me out well but again but i but i think the winners are more the the china's well yeah you know the europe etc because i mean if you almost think about i mentioned this earlier but the u. was always exceptional.
It's always been this city upon a hill that people want to go to. It's always been unique and distinct and different.
And it's always been radical ideas in the United States to have free speech and American capitalism and freedom of religion. These have all been radical ideas for a long time.
And that's allowed us to become the most successful, prosperous, you name it, country. And I think that there's been ways that sort of the Europeans, the Chinese, others, they've been able to infiltrate that and try and rebalance.
I mean, going into the so-called oppressor versus oppressed framework, like for the rest of the world, this US was always this oppressor type country. We're always oppressed.
How do you rebalance? Well, you try and social engineer and you try and- You get the country to kill itself. Yeah, I mean, that's essentially the way that you do it.
It does seem that way if you're thinking long term. And by the way, I don't mean to blame China.
I don't hate China. I respect China.
And they're acting in what they think is their own interest, which I think is what countries ought to do. But I'm not blaming them for, you know, Melissa Skopenhauer, whatever her name is.

Alyssa, sorry.

I was going to let you just keep going.

Because I love everyone.

Everyone's great.

I'm not going to correct at all.

The German lady from Harvard is the CIA guy who drinks muscle milk.

I'm not blaming China for their personal inadequacies, their mediocrity, whatever.

That's their fault.

But big picture, like, it's just like, what is going on here?

Yeah.

I mean, so I think that is what's going on is that you have, obviously, you know, governments

Thank you. that's their fault but big picture like it's just like what is going on here yeah i mean so i think that is what's what's going on is that you have uh obviously you know governments that are that are uh antagonists towards the united states are trying to you know china europe etc trying to kind of pull us back tear us down but even a lot of these other um you know companies as well um unfortunately they have a different view of what business should be and i don't think it's going to be good for the business units in the U.S.
That's bad for everybody. I was with someone the other day who knows Larry Fink really well.
And I said, boy, I think Larry Fink has really been damaging to the country, to the world. And this person said, you know, I feel sorry for Larry Fink.
Why? Why do you feel sorry for Larry Fink? He's the single unhappiest person I've ever met. I'm not surprised by that.

It's so weird.

What's the point of making billions of dollars if you're miserable?

But here's because he doesn't have any principles.

Because if you take a look at BlackRock, it's just been blowing in the wind over the last couple of years.

When it was all about the ESG and stakeholder capitalism, we're going to hold that flag and we're going to carry it. But then as soon as people just with principles think about saying, guys, you're violating your fiduciary obligation because I just asked you to make money for me, not do social engineering policies that are losing money for me.
And so when all of a sudden people started pulling their money from them, they got pulled in front of Congress by a bunch of politicians. Now, Larry Fink is backing away.
He says, I don't say ESG anymore. He pulled DEI off their website.
But why do all these people hate the United States? Like the hostility you feel from someone like Larry Fink toward the U.S. is, like, unmistakable.
It's like, you're mad at the United States, but you're American, and you can only have done what you did in this country with all of our legal protections and all the freedoms that you have. Like, why declare war on your own country? And they all have.
Yeah, I don't know. It's just because he lines his own pockets along the way.
I guess, but there are lots of people who can be i don't know rich and patriotic too you could even i don't know be unscrupulous in business and be patriotic you know you used to work at fox in in uh in you know new york a lot of people um that literally say like i wouldn't say i worked in fox who's uh cat timp she's got she's been she used to tell people she worked in the porn industry instead of saying fox news in new york city i'm not gonna comment on that that uh i mean but i think especially when you're in new york if you want to go to the right schools and go to the right parties and get your kids into this and that like you can't be patriotic in a lot of cases i know you can't stand up and that's of course and i don't need to single out larry fink it sounds like he needs our prayers not our scorn but it's that whole leadership class which is so, going back to, you know, Melissa Hindenburg or whatever her name is. I heard the Hindenburg one.
Sorry, whatever. The German girl from Harvard.
I can't believe that hasn't been picked up, Melissa, the Hindenburg ones. I haven't heard that one.
No, I was thinking of Paul von Hindenburg, not the Blint, but whatever. The last president of Germany.
The one who handed it to the Nazis, actually. No.
People like that, and it's not just her. Of course, it's an entire class of people who I've lived around my whole life.
I know them, and I know their attitudes, and they're all like, they just hate the country. There's like a gut-level contempt for the United States.
And it's like, what did America ever do to you, actually? a ton of opportunity you made way more than you deserved your life is a lot easier than it would have been in any other place what are you mad about but they all feel that way no i agree it's almost you have to be it's apologetic about being here and they work to undermine it they want to wreck it like what's america it's a meritocracy it's like that's the whole promise of immigration by the way immigration only works with an meritocracy it's like yeah the smartest most ambitious fairest most decent people around the world get to move here and just kick ass okay everyone's for that we're not going to like move hundreds of thousands of haitians into your neighborhood just to wreck it like you can't do that yeah you know i mean the the greatest sort of asset that we have in this country it is the american dream i mean that is that is the greatest asset why people want to move here why people want to invest here why people want to be here and there's a lot of other people that want to tear down that american dream they want to make you feel like they're all americans you want to i just find it so strange if they took that destructive energy and focused it on our actual enemies whoever those