Trump late to right-wing attack on Missouri employer in passé Bud Light ‘controversy’ | Opinion

Donald Trump squeaked his way into the White House partly on the public perception that he’s a master businessman and dealmaker. So why is he joining in a pointless boycott of a huge Republican Party donor in a ridiculous online fuss that’s just so last month?

On Sunday, the indicted former president made a post on his Truth Social platform promoting Wayne Allyn Root’s “The Great Patriot BUY-cott Book” — understatedly subtitled, “The Winning Game Plan to FUND Conservative Patriotic & Christian Companies and DEFUND Leftist Woke Companies!” “It’s time to beat the Radical Left at their own game,” Trump wrote. “Money does talk — Anheuser-Busch now understands that.”

Not many eyeballs seem to have seen his message (it hadn’t hit even 11,000 likes a day after it was posted), but Trump fans are likely familiar with the campaign: A small cadre of Very Online conservatives are angry that Bud Light — one of the best-known brands from Missouri’s own Anheuser-Busch — partnered with popular transgender social media figure Dylan Mulvaney in a single post on her Instagram account promoting a March Madness contest.

That’s it. One post from a young TikTok influencer — a metric of fame that doesn’t mean much in the real world. But boy did it rile the MAGA camp. Bud Light, sponsor of Kansas City’s just-concluded NFL Draft, has gone woke!

The attacks on Mulvaney have ebbed and flowed since her April 1 post, but some of the most visible conservative media figures have been especially demonstrative. 1990s rap-rock star Kid Rock posted a profane video showing him obliterating packages of Bud Light with an AR-style automatic rifle. Country singer Travis Tritt tweeted, “I will be deleting all Anheuser-Busch products from my tour hospitality rider.” Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw — that Republican who appeared on “Saturday Night Live” to show how serious and fair-minded he is after Pete Davidson made a crack about his appearance — posted a video where he vowed to “throw out every single Bud Light we’ve got in the fridge.” (However, that refrigerator he showed was stocked full of Karbach beer, also produced by Anheuser-Busch. Oops.) Transgender pioneer Caitlyn Jenner, who’s proving herself further to the right every day, has made it especially personal, openly taunting Mulvaney about her genitals — nasty stuff from a woman who climbed over generations of LGBT activists’ work to land a regular gig on Fox News.

The book Trump is stumping for is trying to forge a strange new path in GOP politics. Its author Root is a TV, radio and newspaper commentator who was the 2008 Libertarian Party candidate for vice president. He’s also a longtime conspiracy theorist whose departure from his previous party didn’t spill many Libertarian tears. Along with co-author Nicky Billou, Root urges his fellow travelers to “stop giving money to companies that hate us” by naming names of businesses that cross his culture war lines in the sand.

Let’s make that clear: He means companies that support diversity, equity and inclusion. And here’s the problem with that plan: Diversity, in workforce and customer base, is just plain good business.

This isn’t a new idea, nor is it remotely controversial among people who study the marketplace, or the entrepreneurs who try to make money in it. A major 2020 study from leading management consulting firm McKinsey & Company found that “the business case for gender and ethnic diversity in top teams is stronger than ever,” and put numbers to it.

It’s kind of a basic business school concept: You should want more, not fewer people to be interested in your product. Bud Light’s partnership with Mulvaney — broadcast only to her own niche audience — is an infinitesimally tiny part of Anheuser-Busch’s massive global marketing footprint.

The Republican Party went all-in on the boycott at first, with the National Republican Congressional Committee attacking the beer and Mulvaney by name. But someone must have reminded whoever runs the NRCC Twitter account fast that Anheuser-Busch is a major GOP donor, because the tweet was scrubbed shortly after it was posted, and its accompanying “This beer identifies as water” koozie fundraiser was deleted.

Donald Trump Jr. must have gotten the memo, too. He told listeners of his “Triggered” podcast April 13, “I’m not for destroying an American, an iconic company, for something like this.”

Anheuser-Busch is the largest single beer brewer in the world. It sells more than 100 brands in the U.S. Boycotts don’t generally work, and anyone who’s just now learning that major public entities have been constant presences at Pride events for decades is going to need to get to work on a long list of enemies. At KCPrideFest, that includes everything from replacement window makers to the police department. (Though some members of the Shawnee City Council were upset about their police recruiting there already.)

As Republicans fret about Donald Trump’s continued dominance on their party’s public profile, they surely can’t welcome him wading back into a month-old mountain out of a molehill. We’d all be better off to let this fight fade away — and hope the next one won’t be so stupid.