Howard Stern and Rosie O’Donnell are showing their support for Dylan Mulvaney, the transgender social media star who has been at the center of conservative backlash following her partnership with Bud Light. Mulvaney announced in an April 1 Instagram video that she was teaming up with Bud Light for a fan contest, while also revealing the company made her a one-time only specialized can with her face on it. An alleged leak of a Bud Light gay pride can also hit social media around the same time.
Many conservative figures condemned Bud Light following its decision to team with a LBGTQ content creator. Kid Rock went viral for posting a video to Instagram in which he used a semi-automatic rifle to shoot down cases of Bud Light. The singer said that he wanted his message to be as “clear and concise as possible,” before bluntly saying: “Fuck Bud Light, and fuck Anheuser-Busch.”
Country singer Travis Tritt later wrote in a Tweet that he would no longer support Anheuser-Busch, the company that produces Budweiser and Bud Light, adding, “I will be deleting all Anheuser-Busch products from my tour hospitality rider. I know many other artists who are doing the same.”
Howard Stern expressed disbelief over Rock and Tritt’s reactions during the April 10 episode of his SiriusXM radio show (via Billboard). “I thought there must be a piece of this story that I’m missing,” the radio host said. “I’m not bothered by gay people or [transgender] people. They don’t impact my life, they don’t hurt my life. I love when people are in love. You wanna be a woman? Be a woman. You wanna be a dude, be a dude. Be whatever you fucking want. As long as you ain’t hurting anybody, I’m on your team.”
“I wish I could call Kid Rock and have him come on the show and just tell me, ‘Why are you so upset about this? How is it hurtful?’ I don’t know why he got so upset,” Stern continued. “Kid Rock, I know him. He’s got a great life. He transitioned from some kid in Michigan to a rock superstar! I’m really dumbfounded by why someone would care so much that they would blow up a can of Bud Light and say, ‘Fuck Anheuser-Busch.’ I don’t get it.”
Stern observed that many of Kid Rock’s songs are all about “doing my thing and fuck you if you’re not with me,” so he found it ironic that the singer would get so upset about Bud Light and Dylan Mulvaney teaming up. In other words, just let them do their thing.
Mulvaney happened to be the April 11 guest on Rosie O’Donnell’s “Onward” podcast, but it appears the discussion was recorded before the Bud Light controversy as Mulvaney did not discuss Rock, Tritt or any of the current backlash. However, O’Donnell did call out Rock in her introduction to the conversation.
“Kid Rock had to take an assault weapon and shoot the boxes of beer, proving what?” O’Donnell asked (via TooFab). “Beer companies have been supportive of the LGBTQIA community for decades. This is not the first time. Who do you think sponsors pride? Gay people, trans people, we drink beer too, man. Put down your gun, Kid Rock, it’s in bad taste. Especially after what happened at the school in Nashville.”
“I have tried to be the most uncontroversial person this past year and somehow it has made me controversial still,” Mulvaney told O’Donnell during the conversation. “I think it comes back to the fact that these people, they don’t understand me and anything that I do or say then somehow gets taken out of context and is used against me. It’s so sad because everything I try to put out is positive, it’s trying to connect with others that maybe don’t understand me, it’s to make people laugh or make a kid feel seen.”
Mulvaney currently boasts 1.8 million Instagram followers and 10.8 million TikTok followers.
