Donald Trump Revives Bud Light Backlash With Dylan Mulvaney Joke at WHCD

President Donald Trump turned an old Bud Light controversy into a new punchline at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and Dylan Mulvaney answered by reframing the attack as a sign of her staying power.

During his July 24 speech at the rescheduled dinner, Trump mentioned Mulvaney four times while targeting CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins, who had been honored with the Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure.

“I thought Kaitlan had really made it big with a major new sponsorship,” Trump said. “But then I informed her that it wasn’t her on the Bud Light can, it was Dylan Mulvaney.”

Mulvaney, a Broadway actress and transgender advocate, became the target of conservative backlash in 2023 after she was featured in a Bud Light social media promotion. Trump later extended the bit on Truth Social, posting an AI-generated image that placed Collins’ face on Mulvaney’s body, surrounded by Bud Light cans.

In a four-minute social media video, Mulvaney said she was “incredibly honored to be compared” to Collins.

“I’ve been kind of flying under the radar, keeping up a pretty low profile, just like doing my little musicals, singing, dancing, and yet I am still his topic of conversation all these years later,” Mulvaney said.

“Like, I am permanently burned into their retinas. I am microchipped into their minds,” she said of her critics.

“The fact that a single line can instantly reactivate the Bud Light storyline shows how long a brand crisis actually lives in public memory,” said Amore Philip, founder of Apples and Oranges Public Relations.

“Consumers may move on from the headlines, but the association stays dormant and can be switched back on by anyone looking for a reference point,” Philip added. “That is the real cost of a polarizing moment. You do not manage it once, you manage its reruns.”

The 2023 Bud Light backlash became one of the most visible examples of a brand being pulled into a broader fight over LGBTQ visibility, conservative boycotts and corporate response.

Mulvaney said she initially felt Trump’s remarks were “not good,” but later reconsidered what it meant to be criticized by the administration.

“Maybe being publicly mocked and criticized by this administration is actually like the greatest compliment of all,” she said.

Philip said brands caught in these moments need more than silence.

“The takeaway is that neutrality is a strategy, not the absence of one. The companies that keep getting pulled back into culture-war narratives are usually the ones without a clear, values-based position they can calmly return to,” she said. “The goal is not to please everyone. It is to be steady enough that a callback years later does not reopen the wound.”