Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) released a spoof Bud Light ad Monday night, going after the “real men of women’s sports” in the wake of transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney’s partnership with the beer company.
“Today we recognize the men who’ve hacked the system (Hacked the system),” the ad says. “Once mediocre in the men’s division, now cream of the crop in the women’s (From mediocre to champion).”
“You couldn’t cut it with the boys, so you pushed women off the podium (Real men steal first place),” it continued. “Because without you, sports would be fair. Without you, women’s sports would be for, well, women.”
The ad, released by DeSantis’s rapid response account on Twitter, spoofs Budweiser’s old “Real Men of Genius” commercials, which poked fun at men who wore toupees, were bad dancers and wore too much cologne, among other things.
DeSantis’s spoof ad targets transgender women’s participation in women’s sports, featuring prominent transgender athletes such as American swimmer Lia Thomas and New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard.
“In Florida, girls play girls’ sports and boys play boys’ sports,” the DeSantis rapid response account wrote. “That’s why we are replacing Bud Light with FREEDOM HEAVY … made 100% woke-free.”
The feud with Bud Light comes after the company partnered with Mulvaney, a prominent transgender social media influencer, to promote its March Madness contest last month. The move drew the ire of conservative critics, who have launched protests against Bud Light and its parent company Anheuser-Busch.
“Why would you want to drink Bud Light?” DeSantis said in a recent interview. “I mean like honestly, that’s like them rubbing our faces in it, and it’s like these companies that do this, if they never have any response, they are just going to keep doing it.”
“This one is one if you don’t have conservative beer drinkers, you’re going to feel that,” he added.
Budweiser released a new ad campaign on Monday, featuring its classic Clydesdale horse galloping in front of several American landmarks.
“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth said in response to the controversy on Friday. “We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”
The transgender community has been a particular target of anti-LGBTQ legislation proliferating in Republican-led statehouses across the U.S. in recent years, with at least 14 states banning gender-affirming care for minors and more than 20 prohibiting transgender women and girls from competing on female sports teams.