Right-wing podcaster Megyn Kelly is quite upset that Joe Rogan is not only dismissing the ongoing conservative outrage over Bud Light’s brief partnership with a transgender influencer but also had the temerity to drink the beer this week.
“Joe Rogan [is] on the wrong side on this one,” the former Fox News star fumed on Thursday.
During Tuesday’s broadcast of The Joe Rogan Experience, the wildly popular podcaster welcomed country singer Zach Bryan, who faced backlash from the right in April when he criticized the anti-trans campaign against Bud Light. At the time, country stars Kid Rock and Travis Tritt pushed for a boycott after Dylan Mulvaney filmed a social media ad for the beer brand. (Despite Rock saying “fuck Bud Light” and shooting up cases of the beer, he still sells it in his Nashville bar.)
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“I’ve drank Budweiser and Bud Light for, like, my entire adult life,” he told Rogan this week. “And then on Twitter, I defended my sister’s spouse, and people were like—people were pissed... and I was like, I didn’t mean to do this. It was crazy.” Rogan, meanwhile, criticized the “goofy” culture war over the beer while downing a can of Bud Light with Bryan.
“And we’re drinking Bud Lights, ladies and gentlemen. Sorry. There’s nothing wrong with it,” he said, adding: “People are so silly. We were just talking about silliness. One person made a really stupid decision, and now everybody’s decided that Bud Light is the enemy. But that’s, like, this thing that people do in America, where they just decide, ‘Now I hate these people. These people are the enemy.’”
Kelly, along with far-right commentator Andrew Klavan, were less than thrilled.
After expressing glee that Bud Light’s parent company AB InBev was witnessing slumping sales, saying she is “enjoying watching them suffer,” Kelly then took aim at Rogan.
“Joe Rogan [is] on the wrong side on this one—popping open a Bud Light, dismissing the whole controversy,” she seethed. “This is the second time he’s done this.”
After airing a clip of Rogan and Bryan enjoying a beer together, Kelly grumbled, “[He’s] not getting it.”
Klavan, a host at Ben Shapiro’s conservative media empire The Daily Wire (which has obsessively pushed the Bud Light boycott), agreed that Rogan was “totally wrong” and complained that conservatives aren’t committed enough to the latest culture war outrages.
“This is one of the cracks in the ice I’m seeing in the culture. The fact the right has—the conservatives are like wrangling cats, everyone has a different philosophy,” Klavan said. “Everyone has a different leader. They never get together on anything, and they never take action because they are natural pessimists.”
He continued: “So they always think it's over, they think it's finished. There’s no coming back. Just gimme my Bud Light and shut up. No! This time, they spotted this, they’ve spotted this transgender movement as an attack on femininity and attack on femaleness, which is exactly what it is. It’s an attempt to destroy the very existence of women.”
Piggybacking on Klavan’s tirade, Kelly groused that Bud Light wasn’t actually “sorry” that it gave a commemorative can to Mulvaney.
“We would’ve heard that,” the ex-NBC News host exclaimed. “That’s not what we’ve heard. The guy has never apologized. He’s never owned up to it. The CEO of Anheuser-Busch, he’s not sorry at all. He’s only sorry that it turned into a controversy for him.”
She concluded, “He doesn’t get it and it’s too late to save his brand. And most of us wouldn’t be caught dead having a Bud Light now, for very good reason. It endorses a whole set of values that we do not support.”
