More than $27 billion in Anheuser-Busch market capitalization, wiped out following Bud Light's 2023 March Madness promotional deal with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, returned to public attention Friday when President Donald Trump invoked the failed campaign during a one-hour-four-minute address at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. Mulvaney, who had largely stepped back from public life since the boycott, posted a reply on TikTok two days later. CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, the other target of Trump's joke, responded over the weekend on Instagram.
The original Bud Light commercial fallout
Bud Light's 2023 March Madness promotion featured Mulvaney posting a video on Instagram with a personalized Bud Light can. Backlash was immediate. A prolonged consumer boycott followed, and Anheuser-Busch shed more than $27 billion in market capitalization. Friday's dinner introduced no new financial data from the brewer; the figure simply reached a broad new audience.
What Trump said at the WHCA Dinner
Trump built the joke around mistaken identity, telling the room he initially believed Collins had landed a major sponsorship before learning the person pictured on the Bud Light can was Mulvaney, not Collins. Collins had just accepted the WHCA Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure (broadcast) for her reporting on the February 2025 Oval Office meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Trump. Trump called the award "fake" and said Collins should not have received it. He also told her directly to smile, saying she held "a nice position" at CNN.
Mulvaney, Collins, and CNN respond
Mulvaney's Sunday TikTok treated the presidential mention as confirmation of influence rather than criticism. "Maybe being publicly mocked and criticized by this administration is actually like the greatest compliment of all," Mulvaney said, "because it puts me in the company of some of the most brilliant, empathetic people in our world today." Mulvaney also told Trump the moment had reminded them of their own power, and quoted artist Shea Diamond: "I am America."
Collins posted an Eleanor Roosevelt line on Instagram over the weekend: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." CNN Chairman and CEO Mark Thompson, through the network's public relations team on X, said CNN stands by its journalists and cited First Amendment protections for press freedom. The statement noted that honest, accurate journalism may sometimes irritate politicians.
The only quantified commercial damage on record from the Mulvaney partnership remains the more-than-$27-billion Anheuser-Busch market-cap loss from 2023.