Transgender activist and social media personality Dylan Mulvaney has rebuked President Donald Trump’s recent attempt to revive the Bud Light controversy during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, stating she remains on his mind more than three years after the boycott that shocked Anheuser-Busch.
In a video posted on Instagram, Mulvaney said she has largely stayed out of the spotlight since the 2023 incident. “Now, the president also brought up a video I did over three years ago, and mind you, I’ve been kind of flying under the radar, keeping up a pretty low profile,” she said. “And yet, I am still his topic of conversation all these years later.”
“It seems to me that I might be like the one that got away for these men,” she added. “I am permanently burned into their retinas. I am microchipped into their minds.”
Trump made the remarks Friday at the annual dinner after congratulating CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins on an award. The president joked that he initially thought Collins had secured a major endorsement deal before referencing Mulvaney: “I thought Kaitlan had really made it big with a major new sponsorship, but then I informed her that it wasn’t her on the Bud Light can—it was Dylan Mulvaney.”
Trump claimed Mulvaney’s April 2023 partnership with Bud Light cost the company $35 billion in market value and labeled it “the worst commercial ever made.”
Mulvaney’s Instagram campaign for a personalized Bud Light can ignited a nationwide boycott fueled by conservative backlash, leading to steep declines in sales and billions of dollars in lost revenue for Anheuser-Busch. At the time, then-presidential candidate Trump praised consumers for holding the company accountable: “It’s time to beat the Radical Left at their own game. Money does talk—Anheuser-Busch now understands that.”
Mulvaney described being “incredibly honored” to be compared to Collins and stated criticism from the Trump administration no longer bothers her. “I might not want to be professionally supported by an administration that doesn’t personally support me or so many others in this country,” she said.
She added: “In fact, maybe being publicly mocked and criticized by this administration is actually like the greatest compliment of all—because it puts me in the company of some of the most brilliant, empathetic people in our world today.”
Trump has consistently made opposition to transgender policies a cornerstone of his second-term agenda. In 2025, he signed the “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order, directing federal agencies to enforce Title IX based on biological sex and threatening to withhold federal funding from schools that allow transgender athletes to compete in girls’ and women’s sports.
