So, what happened to Anheuser-Busch? If you don't mind, since you've thought about this probably more than any living person, How exactly did a company, 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?
Yeah, you know, Tucker, there's a short story to it and there's a long story. I mean, I'll give you the short version and we can get into the longer version of what happened. Great. But, you know, I mean, the short version is it used to be a great American, you know, company. This was owned by the Bush family. The Bush family had 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, and 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 InBel.
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 U.S. consumer, Budweiser, Bud Light, all these things. InBev had a different mentality. They're 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 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, 2018. Wait, you're saying a private equity firm took on too much debt? Yeah, it wouldn't be the first time. So, you know, 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 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, Anaheim Bush, they start. moving away from being a meritocracy, moving more towards diversity, equity, inclusion, moving more towards
And, you know, unfortunately with what happened with Dill 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 of 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. That's so obviously insane. How could anybody say something like that? No, totally insane. And I think let's back up because 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 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 create, 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. You know, it's almost the idea of like when you have this shareholder capitalist 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. social activism, you name it. There's thousands of them. People have nothing to do with your company. That 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 United States, 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%. Put that in perspective, you had $100,000 invested in the U.S. in 1970 and $100,000 in Europe, and the U.S. would 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...
you know, 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 U.S., almost every broad-based prosperity metric, GDP growth, per capita income, interest rates, unemployment rates, the U.S. trounces Europe on all of those. I mean, like, 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 U.S. 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, there are 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 happened.
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 in making sure that everybody can succeed. At the same time, then you had Obama was the president and he came up with 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 we're going to have, 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 is a term that was coined in 2005. Really never went anywhere. The United Nations originally coined it. You know, if the United Nations coined something, usually, you know, 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 coalition.
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, OK, now if these 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, managed 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. You know, if this was like George Soros type money or, you know, Bill Gates, like it's their own money and 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 than 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, it's a crazy time period. We don't need to go through all of it, but...
Companies, frankly, like lost their sense of direction about who were they serving, what their mission is. And 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. 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 is 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, like 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 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 Blackrocks 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 they're... It's a nonprofit group. And their mission is to stamp out systemic racism in the country. Okay, fine. You can do that. You're whatever. But they went to Apple. They bought $25,000 worth of shares at Apple. 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 is a 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 percent. Because you had firms like BlackRock, which is the second largest shareholder of the company, voted for it.
you know, 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 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... you know, 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.
There's 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. 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. Larry 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, throw the entire society off balance so they don't notice the looting.
Yeah, I mean, that's essentially... That's my view! But it is. It's all about... It's controlling 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 made less. but you were charged more for doing it, which is crazy. And, you know, 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?
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. Maybe 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 the... 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 of the Europeans, because they really, I think, believe in this sort of... European stakeholder capitalist 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. 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, when 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. It 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. 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.
What does that have to keep that out of my mouth? I mean, this is like, come on. But this is the problem of, I think, where you're seeing trying to serve multiple masters. I'm not 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 like 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... But corporations, I mean, they're transnational organizations. They operated. With an emphasis on the trans. Yeah, 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. You probably have no idea where your meat comes from. You probably should know. The likelihood is that the meat you're eating passed through a massive industrial processing plant, probably owned by a foreign corporation. Foreign meat. Did you sign up for that? We don't think you did.
So you probably have no idea of knowing where the animal grew up, what that animal ate, or what chemicals big food pumped into the animal to increase profits. That's all kept secret, meaning you can never really know what you're putting in your mouth and in your body. That's disgusting if you think about it, and it's easy to fix. Meriwether Farms, a farm owned by friends of ours, is a great option. We use their meat, we eat their meat for every meal.
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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. No one hates gay. It's like, stop that. Stop that. Get out of my face with that stuff. Yeah, I don't care how people dress. I'm totally 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, authentically, what is a, you know, whatever, Nick Teen Pouts, Cigarette Company, Marble, like, what are they doing? working with organizations. I mean, another thing with Stonewall is like, hey, we want to do youth sex education. How about I get my gun when you do that? Like, stay away from my kids. How's that? I don't understand that. Like, why any society would put up with it? Why Zen 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 others. I don't want them advocating for the Second Amendment either. It's like your 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.
unimproved foreign policy positions. And that's why the Congress did that. And they pretended it was about collecting data. These are 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 so. It's never what they say it is. But I think the broader pieces, though, is that whether it's TikTok, whether it's, you know, Zinn in the United States, whether 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 would be very difficult to operate in the U.S. if the U.S. is leaning more in towards you know, 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. 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 InBav.
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 your writing this book, because...
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 then 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 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 U.S.
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 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 were going to make a bunch of money on that.
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. Kill 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, you know, they fund the police and like, you know, defund the police was a big thing, you know, 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... Cobra 40-ounce bottles, you know, like all over the place. America's favorite malt liquor. You know, like what are we talking about? Did you guys make Old English 800? No, we didn't make Old English 800, no. That was a brand. I drank that as a kid. Yeah. That's one of the reasons I no longer drink. Yeah. Did you ever do like the Edward Ford? 40 hands with that one? No, no, that was a...
Did you miss the Edward Ford hands? I did. And it's just, you know, 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. I'm against drinking. I don't know why I'm laughing. I don't drink. I hate alcohol, but that is hilarious.
Suck 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.
Like, you know, you get glass everywhere. 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 were talking Black Rifle. And yeah, so 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 know, again, like, man, 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 female head of Bud Light in the history of the brand. No problem with that. I'm sure there are a lot of people, 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 like the DEI movement basically said that you need to essentially, you know, put different people in different roles. You need a woman. Yeah, based off immutable characteristics. And even the 21, 22 time. What was her name? Alyssa Heinerschneidt. 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. She obviously wasn't the right person for the company. 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 on 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 team.
And then all of a sudden the company starts putting in these 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 the head-scratching 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 in...
the only people discriminated against in DEI are white men obviously straight white men so like I don't know there are probably some Asians in there too so well they definitely have well they have been a lot of Indians and a lot of other folks as well 100% Asian 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 I felt like nobody had the balls to say that out loud. Like that was considered controversial. You would get fired if you said. out loud. I mean, this was in the 21, 2022 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. 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, you couldn't speak up during this time frame. That was the problem. And then at the same time, you had all these companies that made all these pledges. chief diversity officers. Like this really wasn't even a position before 2020. What do you make? I make diversity. But I mean, but this is crazy. Like, you know, and then all of a sudden there was like a 400% increase and 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. 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 says, 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 Martin Luther King telling us you can't do that, but you're doing it anyway in his name. You know, why don't you screw yourself, actually? Yeah.
I don't think anybody said that. There were a couple of brave people. This is 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, 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. Oh, yeah. 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 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. Like 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 nice political and social, 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 of the J.P. Morgans and, I don't know, those folks in that boat. But then you have the real adherents, and these are the people, the 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 adherents. 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 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. 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, 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. OK, 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 race, or you're not. Yeah, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it literally says, like, you cannot discriminate based off race, sex, gender, national origin, etc. And, you know, a thousand subsequent laws and regulations. Yeah.
Underscore that point. And, you know, this is funny. So actually the Senate, the floor manager at the time was Hubert Humphreys, who became Lyndon 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. Bermanent 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. How do you dismantle permanent D.C., the deep structures underneath everything? How do you train replacements for the bureaucrats getting canned? How do you enact policies that voters actually voted for?
Well, now that Biden is gone, Heritage's vision is finally becoming reality, and you can help push it forward by going to heritage.org slash Tucker and making a tax-deductible donation. Your gift fuels their American Rescue Plan. and help stop permanent Washington from crushing it, from strangling it in the cradle. Heritage has been doing this a long time. They've been successful, and they're more aggressive now than ever.
Their work is worth supporting. Go to heritage.org slash Tucker to make your gift today. We hope you will. So just back to Anheuser-Busch. This disaster happens and... It seems to be, I mean, according to the video that everybody saw. It really a product of this one decision. Well, it's the end of a chain of a lot of decisions, as you so ably described. But the key decision in the fall of Bud Light was by this Alyssa Schneinhauser, whatever her name was.
And there's this famous video where she's saying, you know, basically, I think the old white guys who drink our beer could used to be shaken up a little bit. The fratty and out of touch. That Bud Light has been fratty and out of touch. Sorry, fratty and out of touch. Fratty and out of touch. Yep.
And I just have to say, I mean, she didn't run the company. She's the head of the brand. She has supervisors. If someone who worked for me, well, we sell Alp. And if someone's like in a meeting with me, like the problem with Alp is its users suck. And they've got like 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. So 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 saying, what are you guys talking about? Do people like to be lectured? I love it. Nailed at by Alyssa Schneinhauser from Harvard?
And what's crazy about this, so the timeline of events was, because we're coming up on actually two years when this happened. So this partnership that Bud Light did with Dylan Mulvaney and controversial transgender actors 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 to compete against women in sports.
But this is all of a sudden Bud Light's in a partnership with this. I don't understand this. Then two or three days later, that video comes out of Alyssa essentially being like, Bud Light is fratty and out of touch. We're going to be more inclusive. Fratty and out of touch with what? That's the problem. Alyssa was out of time. I mean, this is who's out of touch.
Get some self-awareness, honey. I mean, 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. Yeah. 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- actually like mostly like underage girls because there were literally all of these now investigations going on saying wait a minute you guys responsible of any who just has a bunch of underage followers? Like, what are you guys doing? This makes no sense. He's 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.
dark. So the partnership itself was obviously incredibly flawed. Is it true that Dillamalvania 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 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 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. 100%. I mean, that's what it is. And actually, you know what? That's fine. I don't want that in my mouth.
I just don't. I actually respect Ben & 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 like 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 like 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.
You're buying their products. And this was the whole deal. So obviously the partnership itself made no sense, but the response to it was just as harmful. Really? Because if you recall 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.
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. 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 can to Donald Trump to celebrate his...
Because Bud Light was not a political brand. And so everyone's really confused. And so the sales just tumble. Was that obvious right away? So yeah, so this is what's really interesting. It's like boycotts tend to work for-
for two reasons. And they actually had never worked almost in history. Everyone talks about, I hated when the NFL had the whole kneeling thing going on, but NFL ratings were super high. Other people have called it boycott, it almost never worked. But in this case, it worked for two reasons. One, if there's a easily accessible substitute,
So if you think about it, everywhere you can buy Bud Light. You have Coors Light, you have Miller Light. I mean, you go to a gas station, you have Coors Light six-packs, Miller Light six-packs, Bud Light six-packs. Yeah. And then you also, you go to Barr. 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 Light. 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. Yeah, I've never had a Bud Light beer. Yeah, but if you like light beer, I mean, it's a great light beer. It's very consistent. They have great brewmasters. So it's very good as a product.
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. 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, you know, 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 they, and Anna's Bush, they can't starve the media of information and data. And so all of a sudden, like Anna's Bush is watching their sales decline a lot. And they realize, wow, we got to, 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. scores Anheuser-Busch every single year on there. Why would a beer company, I mean, the human rights companies are a freak. 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. Oh, 100%. wreck your opponent with this I mean it's insane like it made no sense and when the human rights campaign started I don't know 20 years ago like the whole thing was like okay like I don't 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. Yeah. 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 people. You have to do all the gender affirmation stuff in your health. 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 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, Anderson's Bush won 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. and showing they won these con lion awards, which over in Europe, they have these awards in con France. And to win the Conline Advertising Awards, you have to have your DEI and your ESG policies.
You have to do all of the advertisements that are essentially... You sell beer. Why do you care about an award in Cannes, France? 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 capital 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 sack. Yeah. 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 is 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. But kind of same attitude. But the problem with Disney is that, okay, 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 going to go to Disney World. But with Bud Light... People easily went to Coors Light and After Light. And so...
Going back to this whole story about why the response was so damaging. Can I just ask, since you worked there and you've written a book on it? Yeah, and I had left by this point. Right, of course, but I mean, you 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 fratting 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 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 path to like, I always say like redemption, it goes through forgiveness. But the only way you're going to be forgiven is if you admit you made a mistake. 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 general information 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'd 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, like, because Bud Light was always about fun and music and sports, it's like, 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 that's a Bud Light now. You sell beer. Just sell your beer. We're going to get back to selling beer. Guys, we screwed up. We apologize. 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. But the human rights campaign is like, they're not big shareholders of AB. They have no right to run a beer company. But they're a stakeholder of AB, and that becomes the problem.
You have all of no like moral legitimacy. Even if you love the human rights campaign, which is totally evil, just that's my opinion, having known 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
It just feeds on itself. It's called the stakeholder capitalism industrial complex. But the stakeholder are really the beer drinkers. But that's the problem. That became the least. Well, 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, 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 Clydesdale riding across America. The outrage was palpable, both on the right from their loyal 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 say you're going to become like Ben and Jerry's. 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 know the guy. I've met him and talked to him. Former CIA guy. Former CIA guy. He told me, right. Extremely physically fit. 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 played lacrosse at Middlebury. They're always on the vertical. The guy looks like G.I. Joe. 100%. 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. Afraid, completely terrified. You could smell the fear on the guy. Obsessed with his physical appearance.
Are those fair descriptions? That was just my reaction from spending an evening with him. That's amazing. I mean, you spent one evening with him. I spent, I don't know, I've known Brendan for 10 years, 15 years. I'm not saying he's like a terrible person. I'm sure, you know, I don't know that. But he is definitely, and I hate to single him out, though, he is a former CIA guy, which should be disqualifying right there, but...
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 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-
French mastermind. But it's a little bit of that where Brendan all of a sudden, like, and he knew 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 weak type of response. 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 have 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 Alyssa 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. at least under LinkedIn. It's working for the Live Society Golf Tour. So anyway, we can get to that in a second. We'll get to that in a second. So going to July 4th week in 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 the 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 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 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, it still kept his job. I don't understand that. Like, where's, 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 Anna specifically.
I think their 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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August Bush III? Yeah, the third. What are the best meetings I've ever been in my entire life? It's amazing. That guy's unbelievable. He's unbelievable. I could tell stories. But yeah, he's an unbelievable person. He, and this may be true today, you know, he's an older man, mid-80s anyway, but he was still tasting Budweiser beer every single week that they send him every single U.S. product and he tastes it. He's one of six or seven, you know this because you work there.
And the people who founded that company, that family... You could say a lot of things about the family and this big, fractious family with all kinds of stories, but they all love beer. Oh, yeah. Like, they truly love beer. They drink their beers. Like, they think that Bud Light's an amazing beer, and they think... you know, Bud Heavy is a great beer. Like they're into the product. Oh, totally. It just feels like that's a correct, like.
I use Alp from the second I wake up to the second I go to bed. That's why we own the company because I love it. And I think. If the head of Philip Morris doesn't even smoke Marlboro Red,
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 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. So I 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. 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 system? And they just have the European mindset. This is very different. Tiny little electric cars.
Gay cars. It's so weird. You might be seeing a little mini Jeep. Yes. I have an eight-year-old daughter. She used to have one of those like Barbie Jeeps. That's probably 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's actually done a pretty good job of navigating a lot of the cultural wars is I actually have Netflix a lot of credit. If you remember, there was two or three years ago.
Netflix is 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 on the scale. and there was a lot of prejudice. He was tough on the trans thing, though. He's like, this is...
This is not right. I mean, he like. Yeah, he was tough. 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. No, I'm 100% on Dave Spell's side. I'm just saying.
He was it was more than just a joke. Like he he was serious about it, I think. But the thing I at least give Netflix credit for is when all this was going on, they were told 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 didn't play the Obamas. Yeah, that's it. They'll play that. But then also, well, I guess it was Amazon that picked up the Melania Trump deal. But great. Like, 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, is to 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.
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 a game key. That's the way they were not doing a game key. That would be hilarious. That would be awesome. That would be amazing. That would be amazing. Bring that back.
That would be a pinup of Dylan Mulvaney on a King Cobra. Totally. If Alyssa Schopenhauer or whatever her name is, like, 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. It's just one of these websites that rates beers. They say it's great. So great. They can do that as well. 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 of 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 I... He's did 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, you know, but I said, Hey, I respect what you've done. And I just, you know, don't think you're gonna be a $3 billion company. I don't know anything about, I like him. Nice guy. Again, they are not sponsors of this show, but, um, 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 great product it tastes just like regular beer I think it's better than well 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, I don't know. He sent me a, all kinds of different, one was 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 were amazing. Yeah. And it's opened up what, his non-alcoholic beer used to, I mean, it was. terrible. I never had one. It was so bad. It was kind of a joke.
Now that feels like a Dylan Mulvaney segment. You know what I mean? That's what it was. 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 think I'm categorized as a millennial. But my core, 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, they're great. Hops are amazing, and hops exist for a lot of reasons, but one is to counterbalance the taste of alcohol, because alcohol does not taste good. Right. If you take the alcohol out, the hops just... pardon the pun flower yeah into this amazing now i'm getting very
out of control, but like this bouquet of flavor. I'm getting very dull about Vaney now, but like, yeah. And actually beer complements 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're kind of red and white, and that's about it. But there it actually does a much better job with food. Have you ever seen Alyssa Schopenhauer or whatever her name is, Alyssa, German name from Harvard, and then CIA guy, CEO, have you ever seen them drink beer at lunch? Probably not at lunch. I don't know. I feel...
Brennan was more of like a, you know, he would drink Budweiser like here and there, maybe one 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. I don't know, man. And again, it's, Brennan should have been more courageous. 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? So 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. 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. No one's ever fired it. It's like the U.S. military. Well, but I think this is part of it. Again, when you control this European corporation, I think they're doing a good thing by trying to get involved in pushing more of the political issues.
Also, I think there's something to be said is that when you reach a certain level of wealth and money and you're a billionaire type class. Well, that's it. You want to be part of the right social circles, 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. I bet their kids are pretty great, right? You know, I've never met them, but. 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 Dilma. 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 rocks words and telling the story was like, Brennan said he was coached. He was like, yeah, I was coached. I have to say what I have 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. But it doesn't work. No one is served. So you have to ask, like, what actually is this? So the company is 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 two billion dollars 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.
Just throwing 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 when I know they have much to do with this. This is more of this, again, out of touch. Black lives matter.
helped zero black people except the ones who stole the money from Apple. Except the big lavish mansions. Exactly, but it didn't help black people. I'm all for helping everybody, 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 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 think the winners are more the Chinas. Well, yeah, big picture. The Europe, et cetera. Because, I mean, if you almost think about it, I mentioned this earlier, but the U.S. 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 there have been, you know, it's always been radical ideas in the United States that 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 a, you know, the so-called like oppressor versus oppressed framework, like for the rest of the world, this U.S. 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. I'm not blaming them for Melissa.
Skopenhauer or whatever her name is. Alyssa, sorry. I'm just 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 that are antagonists towards the United States are trying to China, Europe, et cetera, trying to kind of pull us back, tear us down. But even a lot of these other, you know, companies as well. Unfortunately, they have a different view of what business should be.
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 did 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 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 thinking 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 over the last couple of days. 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 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 New York. There were a lot of people that literally said, I wouldn't say I worked in Fox. Who's Cat Timph?
She used to tell people she worked in the porn industry instead of saying Fox News in New York City. I'm not going to comment on that. 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. And you can't stand up. Of course. And I don't mean 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 angry going back to. Melissa Hindenburg or whatever her name is. Sorry, whatever. The German girl from Harvard. I can't believe that hasn't been picked up, but let's say the Hindenburg ones. I haven't heard that one. No, I was thinking of Paul von Hindenburg, not the blimp, 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? Gave you 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 apologetic about being here. But they work to undermine it. They work 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. In a meritocracy, it's like 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 gonna 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 greatest sort of asset that we have in this country, it is the American dream. I mean, 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 it's not real. But they're all Americans who want to. I just find it so strange if they took that destructive energy and focused it on our actual enemies, whoever those might be.
You know, we could get a lot done. That stuff is more dangerous than nuclear weapons. Yeah. Well, I think the pendulum's swinging back. So we've got a lot of people that have finally— I hope that's right. You know, I think a lot of brave people. It's been amazing to see what's happened in Silicon Valley over the last year or two. For sure. I agree. These are a lot of smart, bright people.
that were afraid to stick their neck out there. I mean, thank God for Elon that all of a sudden came around and he gave people the ability to put their neck out there also. And the fact that he represents or owns or runs or whatever his relationship is. companies that make things, physical things.
Yeah. That's why it's so sad to see it happen to AB because it's like they actually make a product. Make a product. You can hold in your hand. And it's a great product. And whether you like alcohol or not like alcohol, I mean, Budweiser to some degree was the American cream in a bottle. This is the famous Budweiser beer. We know of no other beer that costs so much to ruin age. Our exclusive Beachwood aging produces a taste, a drinkability. You will find it no other beer at any price.
You got to be the only person who hasn't drank a beer in 25 years that can recite that. That's how much beer I drink. Is that what it was? For me, it was always a breakfast beverage. Yeah. I was never, you know, I probably should have worked there because I was never embarrassed. I mean, I think heaven, I quit drinking, but. I was never embarrassed to drink in the morning, ever. It never even occurred to me. I just grew up in a different world.
And I always have felt my whole life. That's the breakfast of champions back in the day. If you're embarrassed to do something, don't do it. Yeah. And so I was never embarrassed. I'd like a beer, please. I'd like a Bud Tallboy, like a Bud Tallboy for breakfast with French toast. You know what I mean? Just kind of get you an even keel.
And I've never had a Bud Light in my life, but I did think that Budweiser was like a pretty serviceable beer. It was. It was a great beer. Very serviceable beer. Great sort of Americana beer.
And again, the history of the company is amazing. It's almost intertwined with the history of the United States. It really started before the Civil War, which is crazy. Oh, I know. And there was a huge supporter in World War I, World War II, have Folds of Honor Foundation. I mean, hires thousands of veterans.
And so more long term, I want the company to get back. I want the company to survive. And it was intertwined with American political and labor history. I mean, August Bush III, who is still alive. New Jimmy Hoffa. Yeah. Not like post-prison get murdered Jimmy Hoffa, but like labor leader Jimmy Hoffa. Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, this was at the center. There's a huge employer.
It was a builder of the middle class in this country. They built this distribution network of 500 independent family-owned wholesalers across the country, which are amazing. And all those families got rich. Yeah, and everyone did incredibly well. And so, I mean, more broadly.
And I know a lot of the wholesalers, and they're all upset about what happened the last couple of years because they lost tons of their business. They had to fire employees. But CIA guy still has his job? Yes, which is crazy. And it's even funny as well. This year he tried to, you know how beer on menus usually says domestic or import? Yeah. So he tried to reframe domestic beer as American beer.
which sounds like a great idea. But if you're not an American-owned company, then where do you put Anheuser-Busch? Do you put them on the American beer? Or on the import beer. A lot of times it's important. I think that's one of the reasons they should actually either sell it back to the Bush family or sell it back to Warren Buffett. You know, I think it was, I don't have any special knowledge beyond what's obvious, but I think the problem with these family held companies.
Like a family summer house, there's too many... stakeholders as you say too many family members who want the money And it's hard to keep them going for that reason.
No, I mean, it is. Now, I mean, even in the Bush family, it's their credit. I mean, they got through four generations. It's amazing. No, I'm not criticizing them at all. I'm just saying at a certain point, the family gets really big. Yeah, they didn't own it anymore. And there are certain members who want to run it and own it because it's their family legacy. It's their history.
And there are certain members just like, I live in Aspen, send me the money. Yeah, no, you're right. So, I mean, you got to find that right person. At some point, just nepotism just doesn't work. And there's going to be somebody outside better. But I think that you can have actually U.S. ownership, again, of the business.
And whereas Anheuser-Busch InBev, it's a global company. They have operations in China and Africa and South America and everywhere. The U.S. at this point is only about... I think 20% of their revenue and maybe a quarter of their profits.
So it actually, to me, it makes tons of sense. And the company this year will do, I don't know, four and a half billion of called profits. So I think there's somebody like Warren Buffett could come and maybe he buys the thing for 30 to $40 billion when he's sitting on $300 billion of cash.
And maybe all of a sudden you give actual real authority to U.S. leadership. And move it back to St. Louis. Move it back to St. Louis. Move it back to where it was. Great town. Yeah. I mean, put its whole corporate headquarters back there. Put it back in the Midwest somewhere. I think that would make a lot of sense.
Because otherwise you're going to continue to have a lot of competitors coming in and taking jobs and who knows, or give opportunities to folks like yourself. I mean, you're already going after the Zen folks with Alp, so. The Stonewall brand. This is the non-Stonewall brand. It's just out. American Lip Pillow. You can put it in your mouth. You don't have to worry about where it's been. It's good. Thank you. That was...
absolutely fascinating. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. And then if you don't mind, just plug it at the end. But talk about all this in Last Call for Bud Light, which is the book that we just released on this. this past month. I love it. I'd love people to go check it out. I know your editor, Paul Schwa, one of my favorite people. He's great. I love Paul. He's the best. You probably know Keith at Javelin as well. I certainly do. Great to see you. Thanks, Tucker.
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