He helped to incite a boycott that cost Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch (AB) InBev millions of dollars, but now Kid Rock appears to have changed his mind about the beer brand.
In April, Rock—real name Robert Ritchie—was one of several conservative figures to denounce the beverage, after Bud Light sent a personalized case of beer to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
The 52-year-old even filmed himself shooting a crate of Bud Light and uploaded the footage to X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, telling viewers: “F*** Bud Light and f*** Anheuser-Busch.”
However, during an appearance on Fox News on November 16, the rapper declared he “didn’t want to be in the party of cancel cultures and boycotts that ultimately hurt working-class people.”
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“I know people that work there and it’s not so cool to be wearing around that blue shirt anymore, going places,” Rock told host Sean Hannity. “This is why they have a problem right now, it’s like, I can let the thing go.”
Describing himself as a “conservative” and a “patriot,” the musician said he’d given the issue a lot of thought since calling for Bud Light’s cancellation earlier this year.
“As a God-fearing man, as a Christian, I have to believe in forgiveness,” he continued. “They made a mistake, all right. What do you want, hold their head under water and drown them and kill people’s jobs? I don’t want to do that.
“But I hope—at the same time, I don’t want to be their biggest cheerleader. I want them to show me something to get me back as a consumer, as a drinker.”
Newsweek has reached out to Kid Rock and Bud Light for comment via email.
Mulvaney—a musical theater star who became a TikTok sensation for the Day 365 of Girlhood series—posted a video with the gift Bud Light sent her on April 1. Conservatives subsequently boycotted the beer brand.
Other public figures to condemn the drink included country singer Travis Tritt, who banned Bud Light from his tour bus, while conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro said: “Our culture has now decided men are women and women are men and you must be forced to consume products that say so.”
Bud Light’s sales plummeted throughout the summer, with Anheuser-Busch (AB) InBev reporting a 14 percent fall in U.S. revenue between July and September.
Despite his alleged antipathy towards the brand, Rock was spotted drinking the beverage in August, leading to mockery online.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.