MAGA Calls on Doritos to Get Bud Light Treatment

Right-wing activists are mobilising as they call for Doritos to "get the Bud Light treatment"—meaning a mass boycott—for hiring a trans woman with a controversial past to represent the brand in Spain.

The chips company's European branch Doritos Spain, which is part of parent company PepsiCo Spain, faced a huge backlash on Monday when the brand said that transgender woman Samantha Hudson would be its ambassador. The Spanish artist, who has a YouTube channel sharing fashion and beauty tips, has been slammed online after old sexualized tweets that she allegedly wrote about children resurfaced. Newsweek has reached out to Doritos via an email to the European office of PepsiCo for comment.

Online critics have accused Hudson of being a "pedophile," although there is no evidence she ever acted on the fantasy she posted online as a teenager. Newsweek has reached out to Hudson via her Instagram account for comment. She has not yet publicly commented on the furor on X, YouTube, or her Instagram page.

After the tweets were shared widely online, members of the Donald Trump-inspired Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement are now calling for consumer action against Doritos in retaliation.

The episode comes amid an increasingly bitter social debate about the rights of gay and transgender people. Companies that advocated for the LGBTQ+ community last year were hit by a pushback; beer brand Bud Light was engulfed in a social-media firestorm due to a promotion that it ran with American transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney to celebrate her one-year anniversary as a woman.

The company was rocked by protests, which saw its share price plunge amid a boycott by customers. Target was also subject to such a backlash after releasing a new clothing line in support of LGBTQ+ issues.

It is in this febrile atmosphere that Hudson was unveiled by Doritos Spain as a brand ambassador in a 50-second promo called "Crunch Talks."

However, an old tweet Hudson allegedly published on the social-media platform Twitter (now called X) back in October 2015 resurfaced online and has sparked widespread outrage. The post, which is too graphic to print in full, begins by saying (translated from Spanish): "I want to do thuggish things [to] a 12-year-old girl," before providing an example of an extreme sexual crime against a child. Hudson, now 24, was said to have been aged 15 when the tweet was posted online.

In another post, Hudson allegedly said: "In the middle of the street in Mallorca in panties and screaming that I'm a nymphomaniac in front of a super beautiful 8-year-old girl."

Hudson has also reportedly released a song critical of the Catholic Church and said in one interview that she wants to "destroy and annihilate the traditional monogamous nuclear family."

MAGA activists are now calling for a boycott of Doritos online. One X account with the handle "TEAM USA," which has 170,000 followers, posted: "I'm DONE with Doritos. Anyone else feel the same way?"

The comment was written as a caption to introduce a post from another account called "End Wokeness," which said, "Doritos just picked Samantha Hudson as their brand ambassador in Spain," and alleged that Hudson "admitted to being a pedophiIe."

Another X user, Ian Miles Cheong who has 931,000 followers, posted: "Can we do to Doritos what we did to Bud Light? This person is a million times worse than Dylan Mulvaney."

Another commentator, using the handle @whowatwherewolf, posted a drawing of the Grim Reaper knocking on a closed door marked "Doritos," with blood coming from opened doors behind him labeled "Bud Light" and "Target."

The picture was captioned: "I guess Doritos wants the Bud Light and Target treatment. Enjoy your stock crash."