Fact Check: Were Thousands of Bud Light Cans Destroyed Amid Trans Debate?

A video of a steamroller crushing crates of Bud Light has gone viral, attracting 2.4 million views on TikTok and 2.8 million on Twitter since being posted on Sunday, as of 6 a.m. ET Tuesday, amid calls for a boycott of the brand over its partnership with transgender activist and influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

The beer company last week faced calls for a boycott on social media after Mulvaney posted a video explaining that Bud Light had sent her a personalized can with her face on it to commemorate 365 days of being a girl.

Since then, supporters of Kari Lake, the Trump-backed GOP candidate for Arizona governor in 2022, refused to drink the beer brand at an open bar at a rally in Iowa and a bar owner in Kentucky said he had noticed the drink sparking rows between patrons.

The row over transgender brand ambassadors is symbolic of a wider debate about the inclusion of transgender women in female issues and spaces. Some say transgender women should be treated the same as other women, while others say they are different and that hard-won women's rights must be protected.

But while the video purports to show an act of defiance in the wake of the partnership, some have questioned whether it relates to the recent row.

The Claim

In the video, originally posted on TikTok by a biker, a crowd can be seen watching as the steamroller ploughs across pallets of beer, some of which can be seen exploding as they're crushed. The video's caption reads: "Doing what needs to be done."

The video continues, showing the steamroller repeatedly moving across the swath of crates, as crumpled cans slosh around in a pool of beer. The TikTok user who first posted the video, who in other clips has declared his support for Trump and the MAGA movement, wrote: "Not my beer because im [sic] not confused."

While some commenters noted that those who had destroyed the beer would have had to have paid for it first, boosting Bud Light's revenue, others said it was about "sending a message" to the company that their partnership will have lost them future business.

Newsweek reached out to Anheuser-Busch, Bud Light's parent company, via email for comment on Tuesday.

The Facts

A spokesperson for Anheuser-Busch told Newsweek on April 3 that the company "works with hundreds of influencers across our brands as one of many ways to authentically connect with audiences across various demographics."

They added that the commemorative can it had given to Mulvaney "was a gift to celebrate a personal milestone and is not for sale to the general public."

While many social media users have reacted angrily to the partnership, others noted that many major beer brands have given their support to the LGBTQ+ community in advertising campaigns, suggesting those calling for a boycott may be hard-pushed to switch to an alternative they find inoffensive.

Bud Light is not the only brand to attract such boycott calls. Social media users last week spoke out against whiskey maker Jack Daniel's' "small town, big pride" campaign, in which it teamed up with drag queens from Ru Paul's Drag Race—despite the campaign being nearly two years old.

Meanwhile, in February, chocolate maker Hershey's also faced a similar response to an advertising campaign, after including a transgender rights activist's face on special chocolate bar wrappers in Canada for International Women's Day. Detractors decried the move as "a slap in the face" for "actual" women while others supported the inclusion, hoping it would inspire young people.

But while the video of the cans being steamrolled purported to be the latest in this campaign against Bud Light, the original footage appears to date from late February, when the Mexicali City Council in the north of Mexico, near the border with California, destroyed beer it had seized during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.

The video was originally posted to Twitter by Armando Nieblas, a Mexican reporter, on February 28. He wrote that over 85,000 beer containers had been destroyed by the local authority.

According to Forbes, the beer was confiscated from those trying to bring it into Mexico across the country's border with the U.S. during the initial phase of the pandemic, as beer was deemed non-essential, leading to a shortage of the beverage domestically.

After the video was used to show an apparent protest against Bud Light over its partnership with Mulvaney, Nieblas said on Monday that the video had been used "as part of a disinformation campaign," adding the hashtag "#FakeNews."

The Ruling

False. While it is true that tens of thousands of beer containers—including cans of Bud Light—were destroyed, it was not as a result of anger towards Bud Light's partnership with Mulvaney. The video is in fact over a month old, and shows beer that was confiscated by Mexican authorities being steamrolled.

FACT CHECK BY NEWSWEEK