Ron DeSantis accidentally quoted a Budweiser advertisement that was misattributed to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, as the Florida governor suspended his 2024 presidential campaign.
On Sunday, DeSantis announced that he was ending his presidential campaign in a video posted to X (formerly Twitter). In the video, he spoke about the current presidential race and how he plans to support former President Donald Trump going forward in the race. He ended his speech with a quote he said was once stated by Churchill: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
The video from DeSantis received a community note on X, stating that the quote was never made by Churchill and instead appeared in a Budweiser ad from 1938. “We can find no attribution for either one of these, and you will find that they are broadly attributed to Winston Churchill. They are found nowhere in his canon, however,” the International Churchill Society stated.
A 1939 edition of Life Magazine found on Google Books shows the ad from Budweiser which includes the quote used by DeSantis on Sunday. Newsweek reached out to DeSantis’s campaign via email for further comment.
The accidental use of the quote by DeSantis comes after he repeatedly criticized Bud Light and Budweiser’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch, after they partnered with Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer and activist.
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During his presidential campaign, DeSantis sought to fight against what he called ‘woke’ ideologies and targeted Bud Light saying that he planned to never drink the beer again following their partnership with Mulvaney.
“Just so you know, I’ll serve you anything except Bud Light. I just can’t do that,” DeSantis said at an event in June at a bar in Nevada.
Additionally, in July, CNN obtained a letter that DeSantis sent to the manager of Florida’s pension fund, calling for a potential investigation and lawsuit into Anheuser-Busch InBev stating that the company “breached legal duties owed to its shareholders” with its decision to partner with Mulvaney.
“We’re going to be launching an inquiry against Bud Light and InBev…And it could be something that leads to a derivative lawsuit filed on behalf of the shareholders of the Florida pension fund,” DeSantis said during an interview with Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime in July. “At the end of the day, there’s gotta be penalties for when you put business aside to focus on your social agenda at the expense of hardworking people.”
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.