Anson Frericks
Appearances
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
Yeah, no, Charlie, thank you so much for having me today. And you're absolutely right. I mean, this really was sort of the tipping point. And when Bud Light did the sponsorship with Dylan Mulvaney, I think that was a red pill moment for most of America when they said, we've just had enough of corporations getting involved in political issues.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
We saw when the NFL got involved with having half their players kneel and accepted it. We saw companies like Disney who all of a sudden were promoting all of a sudden parental rights in Florida issues that were going on.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
And then when Bud Light, I mean, the most American of brands, the most American of beers, all of a sudden starts doing this controversial partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, this is really when people had enough. And this is when you actually saw customers left in droves. They lost millions of customers. The company lost billions of dollars of shareholder value.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
Their profits plunged by $2 billion as well. And this is when all of a sudden you actually saw more companies take a step back and look at some of the really controversial, divisive businesses.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
DEI and ESG policies that have been implemented across corporate America by sort of the Biden administration, by asset managers like BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, by a bunch of consultants like McKinsey. And this is when all of a sudden corporations actually took a step back and said, you know, maybe we don't need all this. Maybe this isn't good for business.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
Maybe we need to sort of reevaluate where we are as a company. And, oh, the pendulum is starting to swing back. This is still very relevant. As you've seen, certain companies like McDonald's, like Walmart are and like Tractor Supply Company have kind of stepped back. But other companies are really leaning in. Just this week, you have Costco, JP Morgan have doubled down on their DEI policies.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
And then now there's been a lawsuit that's been filed by a lot of DEI officers at companies that are trying to undo some of Trump's recent legislative agenda. So this is very much still a topic that is alive. And I think we're going to not be seeing the end of the DEI movement anytime soon.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
Absolutely it has, Charlie. I mean, you've just seen that Bud Light, which was the biggest beer brand in America, had lost 30% of their sales, 30% of their customers. Other brands that they have, Budweiser, plunged as deeply. And then even took growth brands they have, Nickelodeon Ultra and Bush Light. All of a sudden those started plunging also. So it's had a huge effect on the stock price.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
At the same time, the broader stock market has been up almost 40%. So Bud Light down 20, 30 percent, broader stock market up 40 percent. So it's had a massive effect. And it's not just at Bud Light. Companies like Target, very similar.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
When Target two years ago got involved in Pride Month and they were having to tuck friendly bathing suits, as you might recall, their stock is down double digits over that time period where their biggest competitor, Walmart, who Walmart has taken a big step back. Walmart ditched their divisive DEI policies. They were more focused on the customer.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
Walmart stock has doubled over that same time period. So I think it's very clear that you're starting to see this really diversion happen. Companies that are leading into controversial DEI, ESG agendas, they continue to shed customers, whereas ones that are kind of sticking up for their customers, just focused on providing great product and services, sticking to their mission.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
Those businesses are going to thrive, especially, I think, in the coming years. And I think those businesses are gonna add a ton of value to their share price. And then also I think they're gonna add a lot of value to just our broader sort of American environment.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
But the private sector and companies used to be an area where people could come together, whether you were black, white, gay, straight, Democrat, Republican, who cares, and just work on the mission of a company, be united around that.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
And then all of a sudden the workplace became a very fragmented environment over the last couple of years with companies taking very controversial stands on defund the police initiatives, on overturning election integrity laws, Roe v. Wade. And there was no reason for this. I think that further inflamed a lot of the division in this country. Some companies have learned their lesson.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
I think other companies have not. And that sort of message is, I think, still being written and will continue to be written over the next couple of years. And we'll see really some companies separate themselves and others continue to fall behind. based off who's going to get involved in political issues moving forward.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
Yeah, there's a short story and a long story. So the short story is that the company really, they adopted really divisive ESG and DEI policies. Now, a lot of corporate America was doing this at the exact same time.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
They adopted these policies because a lot of people that own Anheuser-Busch tend to be these large asset managers like BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, that get a lot of their money from progressive institutions like the state of California, state of New York, European sovereign wealth funds.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
And there was a big push by these organizations, especially when Trump was first elected, and pulled out of global organizations like the Paris Climate Accord, UN Human Rights Coalition, World Health Organization, that all of these large progressive institutions said, if now Trump in government is not going to solve these so-called existential crises of climate change, of systemic racism, of police brutality, then all of a sudden we need corporations to do this.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
And for large, mostly progressive, New York and East Coast-based institutions like BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, that managed $20 trillion worth of capital. Those were the ones that all of a sudden were the single largest shareholders in companies like Anheuser-Busch, Target, Disney. And they started telling these companies that we need you to start solving all these problems.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
And the companies really, unfortunately, didn't have much of an opportunity to push back because these companies, they vote for shareholder proposals every single year at companies. They put companies in ESG index funds, which is our funds that you invest money into hoping that the companies are going to return return capital.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
And they were threatened to be not put in these funds or to not have the support of these large asset managers that were using other people's money to foist these policies on them. And so unfortunately, Anheuser-Busch was uniquely susceptible. The company was bought by a European company called InBev about 10 years ago.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
This European company allowed them to unfortunately switch the ideology away from sort of American values and just focus on the bottom line, focusing on shareholders, more towards this European model of being beholden to your stakeholders, being involved in programs like ESG and DEI. So the company all of a sudden switched their focus.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
From Clydesdale's winning the Super Bowl ad meter award every single year.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
Greatest, greatest. This was by far the company that was the best in terms of winning Super Bowl ad meter. They won more of them than any other company, but haven't won one since 2011.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
These guys were trend followers. They were not leaders. This used to be a company that was leaders in America, leaders in terms of setting culture, leaders about humor. And to your point, they had a clear mission historically, that Bud Light was supposed to be easy to drink, easy to enjoy. It was the most popular beer in America because it was enjoyed by people across the political spectrum.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
Everybody loved Bud Light because it was about humor. It was about football. It was about bringing people together. It was authentic. It was not Ben & Jerry's. Ben & Jerry's is a brand that tells you that we use ice cream to advance a socially progressive mission.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
So, great, if you're eating Ben & Jerry's, it's free market, you know, go eat it, you know that you're going to be supporting defund the police causes and giving land back to Native Americans and all kinds of things. Ben & Jerry's does. But if you drank Bud Light, you were just about, I mean, this is using the VP of Bud Light at the marketing, it was kind of a fratty beer. That's what it was.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
And it was a fun beer. It was kind of the life of the party. And that's what they really lost. when they tried to switch the company more from just one folks on submission, easy to drink, easy to enjoy, to one that was about a more socially progressive beer. And that's where they really got caught, Charlie.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
When all of a sudden they do this partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, it blows up in their face. You have Kid Rock that's using the AR-15 to be able to take out a bunch of Bud Light cases. And now the company all of a sudden, because they had adopted an ESG-DEI policy, they couldn't apologize. Totally. to their loyal customer base.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
But they couldn't also go and say that we're kind of more about the Ben and Jerry's type of brand because they're going to lose even more sales.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
So in the book, Last Call for Bud Light, I don't think they've learned their lesson because here's the deal. If this company's ever going to be redeemed in their customers, really the path to redemption, it goes through forgiveness. But to be forgiven, you have to admit that there was a mistake. So I think this book, it talks about not only the mistake of broader forgiveness,
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
corporate America getting involved in ESG, DEI programs that didn't deliver any shareholder value and were more divisive. But it really uses the story of Bud Light and uses the story of this company to tell that story to really make it easy to understand for folks because Bud Light was the biggest brand.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
So we'd love you to read Last Call for Bud Light to learn more about what went wrong in corporate America and to learn what Bud Light needs to do to move forward and get its customer base back.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
Thanks, Charlie.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Defunding the Globalist American Empire + The Fall of Bud Light
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Glenn, es ist wirklich interessant, wenn man sich über den ganzen Druck auf ESG und DEI denkt. In meiner Meinung hat es wirklich mit dem Verlust von Bud Light angefangen. Das ist, als ich dachte, dass du all diese regelmäßigen, täglichen Leute hattest, die sagten, Man, you know, yes, I did not like when the NFL had all the players kneeling.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Yeah, I hated when Disney got involved in the criminal rights issues. But man, when Bud Light, which was the working man's everyday citizen beer, when all of a sudden they're promoting Dylan Mulvaney and everything that goes along with Dylan Mulvaney, that's when I think people actually really said enough is enough. They stopped buying the beer. Customers left by the millions. Stock price cratered.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
It's something crazy that they still haven't figured it out and there hasn't been a comeback at all.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Ja, absolut. Und Glenn, du warst vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
which is creating great products services that actually creates more sustainable businesses but as many corporations over the last five to ten years adopted this klaus schwab european stakeholder view which was foisted on them by the black rocks the world who were taking money from Also, was hat...
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Yeah, I mean, I don't think many of these people believed in these programs, but unfortunately they were foisted on them by the Black Rocks, State Streets, Vanguard, who are the single largest shareholders in most of these companies. And then you have this whole ESG industrial complex built around this.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
McKinsey, one of the most influential management consulting companies, had their diversity matters, diversity wins, DEI studies that told companies that they needed to improve their DEI. And of course, they could hire McKinsey for millions of dollars to help them figure out how to do that.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
You had the Human Rights Campaign, which is this activist non-profit organization that starts scoring companies. You talk a lot about the social credit scores. The Human Rights Campaign was doing this to companies and shaming them. Es gibt keine richtigen Transgender-Polizisten. So, the Bud Light, you know, the end of, I think, I agree with you, the end of
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
No, I mean, I think the pendulum is definitely swinging back. But I mean, you really see sort of businesses dividing in two camps. You have certain companies that I think have realized that these policies have failed and they want to get back to the bottom line. You've seen companies like Meta and Walmart and Tractor Supply Company and a bunch of other people that have pulled back their programs.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
But then you have companies that are more in progressive cities. Costco has doubled down. Costco is based out of Seattle. They're doubling down on their DEI programs. You have other companies, and I talk about this a lot, but even Anheuser-Busch, which is owned by a Belgian corporation called InBev, that they haven't necessarily publicly backed down.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
I mean, this was the company that lost the most from this whole movement, and they still haven't publicly backtracked, even though a lot of their American counterparts have, because again, they're owned by a European company that promotes more of these values.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
I think that's where you're starting to see this divide, and the companies that continue to hold on to, I think the DEI and ESG philosophies are going to continue to fall behind their American counterparts. So,
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
You're right. Ja, 100 Prozent. Ich denke, dass es einen gefährlichen Cocktail gab, den ich seit fast zehn Jahren bei Anheuser-Busch gemixiert habe. Und ich habe das gerade gesehen. Also, der kurze Hintergrund ist, dass Anheuser-Busch, der von der Bush-Familie, der großartigen amerikanischen Familie, verwendet wurde, wurde von einer europäischen Firma namens InBev 2008 übernommen.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Und InBev war in Belgien, und es wurde auch von ein paar brasilianischen Individuen gestartet. Und sie kamen hier in die USA, und in fünf Jahren, und sie haben wirklich viel von Anheuser-Busch entdeckt, auch und vor allem im Jahr 2015, haben sie die Corporate Headquarters von St. Louis, Missouri, in New York City gewechselt. Oh ja. Anheiser Busch, St. Louis, Missouri.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
You heard that your whole life. Das ist es. Sie haben sich durch das Epochzentrum von der Mitte des Landes bewegt. Es ist immer das Gleiche, wenn man in Peoria spielt. Peoria, Illinois ist sehr nah an St. Louis. Da gibt es ein ganzes Mikrokosmos der USA, das hilft, den Zentrum der USA zu verstehen. Sie haben sich in New York bewegt.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Sie haben New York-Agenzien, New York-Marketing, New York-Folk eingeladen. Das hat sich wirklich verändert.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Ich denke, die Ausgabe der Firma, kombiniert das mit dem Wachstum von ESG und DEI, was wirklich in diesem 2015-2021-22-Zeitraum aufgenommen wurde, für einen gefährlichen Cocktail gemacht hat, den sie einfach verloren, wer ihr Kunde war und wer dieser körperliche amerikanische Biergärtner war.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Ich meine, ich habe es in erster Linie gesehen, dass ein Unternehmen eine große Veränderung hat. Ich meine, du kannst mehr darüber lesen in dem Buch Last Call for Bud Light. Aber
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Eine der großen Dinge, mit denen ich frustriert war, besonders im 2020-2021-Zeitraum, nach Covid, nach George Floyd, die Firma, die diese Meritokratie war, das ist es, mit der ich gegründet habe, hey, du arbeitest hart, du wirst promotiert. Und eines der wichtigen Prinzipien der Firma war, wir promotieren, basierend auf den Ergebnissen, die du bekommst.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Und dann hat sich plötzlich das Prinzip verändert, wir promotieren, basierend auf der Diversität deines Teams. And then you started having diversity dashboards that are coming in to see the diversity of your team. And on top of that, we couldn't even get just partnerships done that I thought made tons of sense. I talk about this in the book a lot.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
I tried to do a distribution agreement with Black Rifle Coffee Company. And you probably know Black Rifle Coffee Company. Oh, yeah. Ihr Ziel ist es, Kultur und Kaffee zu servieren, Feuerwehrleute, Anwesende, Polizei, Menschen, die Amerika lieben. Aber das war zu kontroversial für eine Partnerschaft im Jahr 2021 und Anfang 2022. Das ist verrückt.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Und für mich, und das war unser external affairs Team in New York, Sie haben diesen Deal aufgrund ihrer eigenen politischen Bedingungen verabschiedet. Ich sagte, Leute, die gleiche Person, die eine 6-Pack von Budweiser am Abend trinkt, ist die gleiche Person, die 6 Kuppen von Black Rifle Coffee Company am nächsten Morgen trinkt.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Und was bedeutet das, dass wir keinen Distribution-Deal machen können, wo wir die gleichen Black Rifle Coffee Cans auf die Budweiser-Trucks legen? Und das macht Sinn für alle. Aber das war zu kontroversial für die Partnerschaft. Und das ist, wo man das Zentrum der Gravität sah, wenn man Amerika durch die Länge von Fifth Avenue in New York schaut, versus St.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Louis, Missouri, where I think you really lose sight of who your customer is.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Nein, ich meine, es ist wirklich so. Und ich spreche in diesem Buch viel darüber, dass die gleiche Organisation, das gleiche external affairs team, das das Black Rifle Coffee Deal beendet hat, die waren diejenigen, die das Dylan Mulvaney-Partnership grünlichten. Und anders als Coca-Cola, ich meine, Coca-Cola hat einen schlechten Marketingvergleich gemacht, aber was haben sie gemacht?
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Sie haben eine Behandlung dafür gemacht, sie haben sich dafür verabschiedet, sie haben einen neuen Coke getötet in, ich weiß nicht, ein paar Monaten, und dann sind sie zurückgegangen. Einer der großen Probleme ist, dass man schlechte, schmutzige Marketingvergleiche regelmäßig im Geschäft macht.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
The real problem here is like, yes, the marketing partnership is wrong, but even more importantly, the company's response to it is the reason, Glenn, like sales are still down 40%. Wow. The stock has still lost $40 billion of value and has not recovered before this because the company never took a responsibility and accountability and has not made any changes. The same CEO is still there.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
They still have not come out and enrolled back publicly a lot of their DEI policies. They haven't apologized. They're loyal customer base. They called fratting out of touch. And they haven't been able to admit and say, we screwed up. And I think part of that is because of this kind of European ownership that they have.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
And my feeling is that they're not actually going to get their Bud Light customers back, no matter how much money they throw at Dana White and the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which I think they gave him $100 million. They have Shane Gillis. They have others. Because the real path to redemption, I mean, it goes through forgiveness. You know this.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
But the only way to be forgiven is actually to admit there was a mistake and there was an error. And they have yet to do that. And until they do that, I don't think a lot of these customers are coming back, no matter what marketing you give folks.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Yeah, so, you know, it's funny. So I left Anheuser-Busch one year before that deal in Mulvaney Partnership after they wouldn't let me do the Black Rifle deal. They wouldn't let me. I saw the company changing from a diversity standpoint. And Vivek and I, we started a company called Strive Asset Management, which was we were going to invest everyday citizen dollars into businesses that
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
And have them be focused, once again, on meritocracy. Have them be focused on their mission. Don't necessarily get involved in a lot of political and social issues. Like we saw, I was living in actually Atlanta, Georgia, if you remember, Glenn, in 2021, when Governor Kemp signed the Georgia Voting Rights Act. He said, you need to have an ID to vote. And corporate America lost its mind.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
BlackRock, one of the very first companies, said, we're against this law, we're pushing back on it. Then they kind of compelled Coca-Cola, Delta to get involved in this and push back. And Major League Baseball canceled the All-Star Game in 2021 in Atlanta. over this Georgia Voting Rights Law. You need to have an ID to vote.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
So we saw a lot of these problems happening and we came out and we said, we're going to start a new asset manager, compete against BlackRock. Let's have companies just focused on whatever their mission is. Stay out of politics. That will be good for business because you're not going to fracture your customer base.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
It's going to be good for our democracy as well because we should have individuals are the ones should be deciding what rules they live by, not these Supernational Organisations or ESG Promoting Asset Managers. And it was funny, when we originally launched, this was not only a contrarian position, this was almost like a subversive position in 2022, three years ago.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
People called us everything, anti-ESG, anti-DEI, anti-woke. Yeah, anti-everything. Anti-everything. And I said, guys, we're just pro-American, free market, shareholder capitalism. That's what we are pro. Wir sind gegen europäischen Stakeholder-Kapitalismus, wir sind gegen die Weltwirtschaft, wir sind gegen diese europäischen Agenda.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Ja, wir sind das, aber wir sind sehr viel pro-amerikanischer freier Markt-Shareholder-Kapitalismus. Und ich meine, es gab viele Leute, die mit uns nicht zusammenarbeiten würden. Marketing-Agenzien würden nicht mit uns zusammenarbeiten, Leute würden mit uns zu Beginn nicht zusammenarbeiten.
The Glenn Beck Program
Bud Light Insider Reveals What Led to Dylan Mulvaney Controversy | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Und es ist so lustig jetzt, weil jetzt, drei Jahre später, was eine sehr kontrarierte Idee war, ist jetzt sehr mainstream geworden. Und das Pendulum hat sich wieder zurückgewandt, glaube ich, für die meisten der Corporate Amerikaner, die sich jetzt wieder auf ihr Geschäft konzentrieren wollen.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Glenn, es ist wirklich interessant, wenn man sich über all den Pushback von ESG und DEI denkt. In meiner Meinung hat es wirklich mit dem Verlust von Bud Light angefangen. Das ist, als ich dachte, dass du all diese regelmäßigen, täglichen Leute hattest, die sagten, Mann, ja, ich mag es nicht, wenn die NFL alle Spieler abhängt.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Ja, ich hasste es, als Disney mit den Problemen der Prämienrechte involviert wurde. Aber Mann, als Bud Light, das war der arbeitende Mann, der tägliche Bürgerbier, als sie plötzlich Dylan Mulvaney und und alles, was mit Dylan Mulvaney zusammenhängt. Das ist, warum ich denke, dass die Leute wirklich genug gesagt haben. Sie stoppten, die Bier zu kaufen. Die Kunden sind von den Millionen verlassen.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Der Stockpreis ist ein Krater. Es ist verrückt, dass sie es noch nicht herausgefunden haben. Es gab noch nie einen Rücktritt.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Ja, absolut. Und Glenn, du warst vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor allem vor was großartige Produkte und Dienste ist, das tatsächlich mehr nachhaltige Unternehmen erzeugt.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Aber so wie viele Unternehmen in den letzten fünf bis zehn Jahren diese Klaus Schwab-Europäische Stakeholder-Ansicht adoptiert haben, die von den Black Rocks der Welt gefeuert wurde, die Geld von sehr prozessiven Pensionen in Kalifornien, New York und europäischen Souveränwährungsbanken verdient haben.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Ich meine, wir sahen, dass das die wenig nachhaltigste Sache ist, die ein Unternehmen machen kann. Was ist das?
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Yeah, I don't think many of these people believed in these programs, but unfortunately they were foisted on them by the Black Rocks, State Streets, Vanguards, who were the single largest shareholders in most of these companies. And then you had this whole ESG industrial complex built around this.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
McKinsey, one of the most influential management consulting companies, had their diversity matters, diversity wins, DEI studies that told companies that they needed to improve their DEI. And of course, they could hire McKinsey for millions of dollars to help them figure out how to do that.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
You had the Human Rights Campaign, which is this activist non-profit organization that starts scoring companies. You talk a lot about the social credit scores. The Human Rights Campaign was doing this to companies and shaming them if they didn't have the right transgender policies in place. They didn't have So, the Bud Light, you know, the end of, I think, I agree with you, the end of
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
No, I mean, I think the pendulum is definitely swinging back, but I mean, you really see sort of businesses dividing in two camps. You have certain companies that I think have realized that these policies have failed and they want to get back to the bottom line. You've seen companies like Meta and Walmart and Tractor Supply Company and a bunch of other people that have pulled back their programs.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
But then you have companies that are more in progressive cities. Costco has doubled down. Costco is based out of Seattle. They're doubling down on their DEI programs. You have other companies, and I talk about this a lot, but even Anheuser-Busch, which is owned by a Belgian corporation called InBev. that they haven't necessarily publicly backed down.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
I mean, this was the company that lost the most from this whole movement, and they still haven't publicly backtracked, even though a lot of their American counterparts have, because again, they're owned by a European company that promotes more of these values.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
I think that's where you're starting to see this divide, and the companies that continue to hold on to, I think the DEI and ESG philosophies are going to continue to fall behind their American counterparts. So...
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
I think that there was a dangerous cocktail mixing for almost 10 years at Anheuser-Busch. And I kind of saw this firsthand. So the quick background is Anheuser-Busch, which used to be this great American-owned family by the Bush family, it was taken over by a European company called InBev in 2008. Und InBev war in Belgien und dann war es auch von ein paar brasilianischen Individuen.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Und sie kamen hier in die USA in über fünf Jahren und sie hat wirklich viel von Anheuser-Busch entdeckt, auch in der Jahre 2015. Sie haben die Corporate Headquarters von St. Louis, Missouri, in New York City gewechselt. Oh ja. Anheiser Busch, St. Louis, Missouri. You heard that your whole life. Das ist es. Sie haben sich in die Mitte des Landes bewegt. Es ist wie in Peoria.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Peoria, Illinois ist sehr nah an St. Louis. Es gibt einen ganzen Mikrokosmos von den USA. Das hilft, die USA zu verstehen. Sie haben sich in New York bewegt. Sie haben New York-Agenzien, New York-Marketing, New York-Folk gegründet. Das hat sich wirklich verändert.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Ich denke, der Ausblick der Firma, kombiniert das mit dem Wachstum von ESG und DEI, was wirklich in diesem 2015 bis 2021, 2022 Zeitraum aufgenommen wurde, für einen gefährlichen Cocktail gemacht hat, den sie einfach verloren, wer ihr Kunde war und wer dieser koreane amerikanische Biergärtner war.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Ich meine, ich habe es als erstes gesehen, dass ein Unternehmen eine große Veränderung hat. Ich meine, du kannst mehr darüber lesen in dem Buch Last Call for Bud Light. Aber
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Eine der großen Dinge, mit denen ich frustriert war, besonders im 2020-2021-Zeitraum, nach Covid, nach George Floyd, die Firma, die diese Meritokratie war, das ist, worauf ich gegründet habe, war, hey, du arbeitest hart, du wirst promotiert. Und eines der wichtigen Prinzipien der Firma war, wir promotieren, basierend auf den Ergebnissen, die du bekommst.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
Und dann hat sich plötzlich das Prinzip verändert, wir promotieren, basierend auf der Diversität deines Teams. And then you start having diversity dashboards that are coming in to see the diversity of your team. And on top of that, we couldn't even get just partnerships done that I thought made tons of sense. I talk about this in the book a lot.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
I tried to do a distribution agreement with Black Rifle Coffee Company. And you probably know Black Rifle Coffee Company. Oh, yeah. Its mission is to serve culture and coffee to firefighters, first responders, police, people who love America. But that was too controversial of a partnership in 2021 and early 2022. And for me, it was our kind of external affairs team in New York.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
They essentially scuttled this deal based off of their own political leanings. I said, guys, the same person drinking a six-pack of Budweiser at night is the same person drinking, you know, six cups of Black Rifle Coffee Company the next morning. And what do you mean we can't do a distribution deal where we're putting those same Black Rifle Coffee cans on the Budweiser trucks?
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
And this makes sense for everybody. But that was too controversial of a partnership. And that's where you saw just that center of gravity when you're looking at America through the lens of Fifth Avenue in New York. versus St. Louis, Missouri, where I think you really lose sight of who your customer is.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
No, I mean, it really has. And I get into this in the book a lot about that same organization, that same sort of external affairs team that canceled that Black Rifle Coffee deal. They were the one that greenlit the Dylan Mulvaney partnership. And unlike the Coca-Cola, I mean, Coca-Cola, they made a bad marketing mistake. But what did they do? They took accountability for it.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
They apologized for it. They killed New Coke within, I don't know, a couple of months. They were going back to the whole thing. Eines der großen Probleme ist, dass man regelmäßig schlechte Marketingverletzungen in der Geschäftsführung macht.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
The real problem here is like, yes, the marketing partnership is wrong, but even more importantly, the company's response to it is the reason, Glenn, like sales are still down 40%. Wow. The stock has still lost $40 billion of value and has not recovered before this because the company never took a responsibility and accountability and has not made any changes. The same CEO is still there.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
They still have not come out and enrolled back publicly a lot of their DEI policies. They haven't apologized to their loyal customer base. They called fratting out of touch. And they haven't been able to admit and say, we screwed up. And I think part of that is because of this kind of European ownership that they have.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
And my feeling is that they're not actually going to get their Bud Light customers back, no matter how much money they throw at Dana White and the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which I think they gave him $100 million. They have Shane Gillis. They have others. Because the real path to redemption, I mean, it goes through forgiveness. You know this.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25
So, the name of the book is Last Call for Bud Light, the Fall and Future of America's Favorite Beer. You're streaming the best of Glenn Beck.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Yeah, I mean, that's essentially... That's my view. But it is. It's all about... It's control and money. I mean, it's control and it's money. I mean, you think about... But all these social issues were always a cover for what was actually going on, which is like Larry Fink getting richer. Oh, 100%. And it's so funny. So when he started talking a lot about...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
environmental social governments in 2018, 2019, all of a sudden they started a scoring system. You know, it's almost like a social credit system you'd have in China or somewhere else, scoring companies on how little carbon that they use, or scoring companies on, do they do gender affirmation care for their employees?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And these scores were used to essentially pick and choose companies that could be included in indices that Larry Fink and BlackRock and others, they could charge investors three to four times the amount of money for these ESG funds versus the regular funds. And the funny thing was these ESG funds underperformed. They're broad-based counterparts.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
A lot of cost cutting that went on, brought a lot of European people into the United States, changed the headquarters from St. Louis, Missouri, which is almost the geographical center of the country. And a wonderful town. Wonderful town. And they moved it to New York City. And then when they moved it to New York City- Not a wonderful town. Very different town, different mentality.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
So you ended up with less money, but you were charged more for doing it, which is crazy.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I mean, there might have been one or two people there. But no, I mean, I don't really think. I think this was all just sort of a money grab and a feel good and being able to go to the right parties in New York City. That's the way it seems to me, but, you know. I mean, it really is because it just doesn't pass any of the first principle test whatsoever. And, you know, it's funny.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
The companies that were the worst, I mean, this tended to be more of a New York City, you know, kind of ideology. Also a European ideology as well. I mean, there is some sincerity to it. I mean, this is funny. You'll appreciate this because I think the...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Where we're going with all of this, because you've seen obviously retreat with a lot of companies have backed away from DEI over the last couple of months. There's other companies that are holding on to some vestige of it, but there's others that are really all in on diversity and inclusion. To this day. You're going to love this.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And the worst of the Europeans, because they really, I think, believe in this sort of European stakeholder capitalist model. So you have, I'll give you a plug for Alp right now. So if you talk about one of the worst companies that's out there- Which is America's greatest nicotine pouch.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Exactly. But who is your biggest competitor? That would be the Zinn Corporation. Zinn. Do you know who owns Zinn? I do. So it's Philip Morris International.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
They are operationally headquartered in Switzerland. On their website to this day, I mean, you go on their website today, they have a massive diversity, equity, inclusion piece that is on their website. Yeah. They have, and I would say it's, I'll call it the worst aspects of DI, which can be quota systems, race-based systems.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And on their website today, they say, we're going to hire 20% of our people. We want to be Asian. Put it on their website, just 20%. They want 40% women. I mean, literally quota systems they have on their website today.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Yeah. So, I mean, but the other piece is that on their website, and this is a company that makes Marlboro cigarettes and Zinn and other things, is so they're like one of their big, one of their big partners for Pride Month that's coming up is the Stonewall Org. And Stonewall Org is one of these LGBTQ plus organizations. And, you know, fine, you can do that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
But like they are advocating for biological men to compete against women in sports. Wait, Zinn is all in on the gay thing? I mean, but like, this is what's crazy is that like, and I think this is the problem about where we're going is. What does that have to keep that out of my mouth? I mean, this is like, come on.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
So, but like, this is the problem of, I think like where you're seeing trying to serve multiple masters. I'm not making this up. You can literally go on their website literally today and see all of this.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And then all of a sudden, they had bought a bunch of different beer companies. After buying Anna's and Bush, they bought Group Modelo, SCB Miller, took on too much debt. All of a sudden, the company in 2017- Wait, you're saying a private equity firm took on too much debt? Yeah, it wouldn't be the first time. So, you know, never happened before, right? Never happened before.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And I think this is the problem we're seeing is that you have these more like European based companies that I think might sincerely probably believe a lot of this or the European mindset, which is very distinct from sort of the American capitalist model. Crippled by war guilt, bent on suicide. Yes. Yeah. And I mean, at least here in the United States and others, we have a democracy.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
We can throw people out if we don't like them. But corporations, I mean, they're transnational organizations. They operated with an emphasis on the trans. But they go across borders. And if you are sort of operation philosophically, sort of a European based company, but you have operations in another country and you're imposing those values in another country, I think that's problematic. Yeah.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And I think the bigger problem was, is that in 2018, 19, for a bunch of different reasons, the company to try and grow, they adopted a lot of the ESG, DEI philosophies that we've heard a lot about, stakeholder capitalism, which is this European concept that businesses are supposed to serve all types of purposes. That pops up.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Stop that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I don't care.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
nicotine pouch company would be lecturing me about people's sex lives like stop i agree and this is the other thing about like authentic yeah authentically what is a you know whatever nicotine pouch cigarette company marble like what are they doing working with organizations i mean another thing is stonewall is like hey we want to do youth sex education if we're lg how about i get my gun when you do that like stay away from my kids how's that again like just
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
No, it is. And here's the other thing. It's like, I don't want Philip Morris to do the others. I don't want them advocating for the Second Amendment either. It's like, you're a cigarette company. Just do that. Yeah. Just do that. They don't even sell cigarettes well. They don't even believe in what they do. Yeah. So I think what's interesting about where we're going is that...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
You're going to have sort of these companies. You're seeing the same thing with China. I mean, why is TikTok being asked to be sold in the United States? Well, because it's technically owned by a Chinese company and the Chinese values, they're collecting data and information. That's not going to work for the United States. So they might need to sell it. That's not why.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And then two or three years later, all of a sudden, the company has really changed. It changed from sort of a great American company based in the Midwest, based off meritocracy values. And then all of a sudden, in the kind of post-COVID, post-George Floyd era, Anheuser-Busch, they start –
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Got it. Well, you know, it's so it's never what they say it is. But I think the broader piece is, though, is that whether it's TikTok, whether it's, you know, Zinn in the United States or Anheuser-Busch, which used to be American owned. Yeah. I think you're going to have a lot of these companies need to have choices about what they're going to make moving forward.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I think it's going to be very difficult to operate in the U.S. if the U.S. is leaning more in towards these radical ideas of free speech and religion and open dialogue and those things, whereas we've always kind of been a city on the hill in the United States. We've always been this exceptional difference. Now more than ever, really. Probably now more than ever.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I mean, we're almost more isolated than probably we've ever been. Yes, I think that's right. The last four or five years, yes, we were going more towards this quasi-European socialism mentality. government intervention and free speech and everything else. And we have now rejected that as a country. But I think what's difficult is that, yes, we've rejected it politically.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
But again, corporately, there's all these tethers from around the world, the effects of globalization over the last 20 years, that you have a lot of these companies that, frankly, might not hold sort of those same American values. Talk Philip Morris, you know, Anheuser-Busch InBev. based in Europe.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
In Europe, they have quota systems for how many board members have to look this way or be that way over in Europe. And one of the reasons that I think, again, going back to the original question, like, how did this happen in the United States? Bud Light, the biggest beer brand in the United States, how do they have a partnership with Dylan Mulvaney?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Well, they, I think, have a lot of these European-type values now, diversity, equity, inclusion.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
No, they don't. And then really, I think the eye opening moment, even for me, where how companies have been co-opt is I don't know if you meant to have the Black Rifle Coffee Company cup on your desk.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
So, I mean, you'll appreciate this story. And I write about this in my book, Last Call for Bud Light. But one of the opening chapters I have is, so I was president of Anheuser-Busch in the U.S. And I tried to do a distribution agreement with Black Rifle Coffee Company.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
moving away from being a meritocracy, moving more towards diversity, equity, inclusion, moving more towards getting more involved in political issues. And, you know, unfortunately with what happened with Dylan Mulvaney and Bud Light, that was the product of maybe 10 years of mistakes the company had made.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Because a lot of times the same people that were drinking a six-pack of Budweiser at night were drinking six Black Rifle coffees in the morning. And so we were going to put the Black Rifle Coffee, their kind of 16 ounce drinks on the same trucks that carry Bud and Bud Light to Walmart and Kroger and 7-Eleven.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And so I had this whole deal and we were going to make a bunch of money on that partnership. And our legal team, which was now based in New York City and our external affairs team based in New York City, this is in 2021, killed the deal. Said, you can't do it. I was like, what do you mean? Like, here's all the financials. This makes tons of sense. Like, this is a great company.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
They're growing like gangbusters. I said, can't do it. Company's too controversial. I was like, what do you mean?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I was like, you know, the company, like their mission is to serve coffee and culture to firefighters, police officers, law enforcement, people who love America. And the coffee, just in point of fact, is excellent. Yeah, great coffee.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
This is my thing. I mean, you know, this is, that's their mission. That's what they do. And, you know, Budweiser, we had partnerships with Folds of Honor and other military. But in 2021, because of the whole DEI movement, which said like, Ooh, you know, they fund the police and like, you know, defund the police was a big thing, you know, kind of going on at the time.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And ooh, military, you know, I don't know about that. That seems a little bit too controversial. I'm like, guys, like we sell like King Cobra 40 ounce bottles.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
That's it. You know, you couldn't untape them until you finished both of them. I feel guilty for laughing. Yeah, there were too many bad stories. Like, you know, someone would get through one or half of them. Like, you know, you're rumbling around and you fall. And it's like, you know, you get glass everywhere. But anyway, so no, not OE. There were other ones. Sorry. Sorry for the digression.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And now all of a sudden you have a company that's lost 50% of its sales with the biggest beer in America, Bud Light, and they still haven't turned it around. So that's the short story. Now we can get into the longer story about maybe more broadly what happened.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
But I can't remember where we were going with that. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. No, we were talking Black Rifle. And yeah, so the deal gets killed. And that exact same, because it was too controversial of a brand, yet a year later, that exact same department, based in New York City now, that killed the Black Rifle Coffee deal, they greenlit the Dylan Mulvaney partnership.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And the Dylan Mulvaney partnership, like, it was incredibly puzzling if you're a Bud Light drinker. And, you know, again, like, man, I don't care how people identify or what they want to, you know, do with their lives. But, like, one of the reasons that Bud Light became the biggest, most popular beer brand in the United States is because it was remarkably apolitical.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Like, it was a brand that was enjoyed by Democrats and Republicans alike. Of
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
because it was about like fun and it was humor it was sort of this like you know somewhat you know counter-cultural you know type of brand was about sports and music and you know backyard barbecues and all of a sudden the uh bud light had just hired its first you know female uh head of bud light in the history of the brand you know no problem with that i've you know i'm sure there'll be there are a lot of there are a lot of people that a lot of girls i know would be great vp markers about light
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
The problem with it was the person they hired was a lady who had grown up in New York City, went to Harvard for undergrad, Wharton for grad school, had only lived in basically the Northeast her entire life. I don't know if she'd ever drank a Bud Light in her life, and I don't know if she ever knew anybody who had as well. And she was very— Why would she make her the head of the brand?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Well, because like the DEI movement basically said that you need to essentially, you know, put different people in different roles. You need a woman. Yeah, based off immutable characteristics. And even the 21, 22 timeframe. What was her name? Alyssa Heinerscheidt. And I know Alyssa. I mean, Alyssa, she's, you know, nice girl. And I worked with her when I was at the company for a while.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
But she probably wasn't the right person for Bud Light. Yeah, probably not. She obviously wasn't the right person for the company. Yeah, probably not. Almost 50%. So obviously wasn't the right person for the company. But in this broader kind of narrative, in 2021, 2022, this is when I was deciding to kind of like leave Anheuser-Busch.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I'd mentioned the black rifle thing was kind of the final sort of last straw for me. But even before that, The principles of the company changed. My journey was the meritocracy. It was like, we want to hire the best and brightest, and we want to reward them based off their results and pay them accordingly. Great.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
But in 21, 22, all of a sudden that principle, there were 10 principles of the company, that went around really hiring the best price changed towards, we now reward people based off the quality and diversity, which was bolded by the company and diversity of your teams.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And then all of a sudden the company starts putting in these, you know, diversity dashboards where you can see what the diversity makeup of your team is.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Well, yeah. I think it was just more so that the head scratching piece of like, you know, it doesn't matter if you're again, like white or black or gay or shit, like, don't care. I just want the best people.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
You would get fired if you said that out loud. It's true. This was in the 21, 20, 22 timeframe. But that's the problem with where we were. I mean, you know, this is a censorship regime. I mean, heck, you had the Biden administration. Well, I got fired. Yeah.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
So actually, it's kind of... So you remember this. I do. Yeah, I guess I do. More so than anybody. But yeah, you couldn't speak up during this time frame. That was the problem. And then at the same time, you had all these companies that made all these pledges. I mean, the chief diversity officers. This really wasn't even a position before 2020. What do you make?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I mean, but this is crazy. Like, you know, and then all of a sudden there was like a 400% increase and chief diversity officer position. And these were all high six figure salary positions. All the executive level. What do you do if you're a diversity officer? This is the problem. You find things to do. And this was the problem. So the first thing was the whole pronoun police comes in.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Well, let's be more inclusive of all the pronoun piece. And then, hey, let's put in quota systems that we're going to put in place. So we hire a certain number of people with this immutable characteristic or that of characters.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Yeah, a lot of people did. But this is the problem as well. A lot of people just went along with it because they felt if you didn't, then you could be called out by your HR team.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And I think that's what's part of the problem. Now what's nice is that I think people have the ability to say, you know what, I'm not going to do that. But three years ago, you couldn't. Three years ago was... The whole thing is designed to degrade you.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I completely agree. And... you know
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Thank you.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
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The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Thank you.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
No, totally insane. And I think, like, let's back up, because, I mean, really, I think this story starts almost 40 years beforehand, where you really are starting to talk about what is the purpose of a corporation? Like, what are businesses and the business of doing? And in the United States, since the 1970s, you had sort of this view of Milton Friedman.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Milton Friedman, famous economist, said the purpose of a corporation was to serve its shareholders, the people who actually own the business. How do you do that? Well, you focus on your customers, focus on creating great products and services. When you do that, you create, generate more revenue. You can hire more people and business continue to grow and do all the great things businesses do.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
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The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
There was this other philosophy that was more this European view of the world that says the purpose of a corporation is to serve all stakeholders. That was served by Klaus Schwab. This is the World Economic Forum, Davos type of elite that over in Europe. What's a stakeholder? So that's the problem. There are thousands of stakeholders.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
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The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
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The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
You know, it's almost the idea of like when you have this shareholder capitalism model that Milton Friedman says, you must have like one God. The God is the shareholder. That's who you have to take a look at. But the stakeholder capitalism model, you have thousands of gods. Those can be activists, government employees. They can be suppliers. They can be social activists. I mean, you name it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
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The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
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The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
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The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
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The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
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The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
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The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
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The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
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The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
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The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And then you also, you go to bar, you have Miller Lite on tap, you have Bud Light on tap. And for 95% of Americans, I mean, Bud Light is indistinguishable from Coors Light and from Miller Lite. So the substitutes are easily there.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Bud Light?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Yeah, I mean, if you like light beer, I mean, it's a great light beer. It's very consistent. They have great brewmasters. They have, so it's very good as a product. But so also is Coors and Miller Lights. But it's almost like a commodity of a brand. Right, right. So therefore, the only thing you actually did have was your brand itself, which Bud Lights was funny, humorous, and apolitical.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
The other reason that boycotts work is that if you actually feel like you're having an impact and having an effect. And the other thing that happens, which is interesting in the beer industry, is every week, You get data that's reported by Walmart and Kroger and 7-Eleven. Your big retailers. All these big retailers about what sales look like. And that's just reported every week.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Usually people don't care about that at all. I mean, you know, no one ever cares what the real sales are. But in this instance, all of a sudden the media was reporting every single week that Bud Light sales were down 10%, 20%, 30%. So it snowballs. So it starts snowballing. And in Anna's Bush, they can't starve the media of information and data.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And so all of a sudden, like, Anheuser-Busch is watching their sales decline a lot. And they realize, wow, we got to do something. The problem was, they always say they're stuck between this, you know, the black rock and a hard place. You know, it's black rock for saying, hey, you guys need more DEI and inclusivity. And that's the agenda we're pushing.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
There are corporations like the Human Rights Campaign that scores Anheuser-Busch every single year on there. Why would a beer company...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Well, because the problem was, again, BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, who are technically these large shareholders of your business, they have adopted ESG and DI, and they're saying, if you want to get included in our ESG indexes, or Mike Bloomberg, Bloomberg has a gender equality index. If you want to get included in these, you guys need to have a perfect score on the human rights campaign.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
There's thousands of them. People have nothing to do with your company. It has nothing to do with the company. But you're supposed to be in the business of maximizing value for all so-called stakeholders, for the greater good of society. Sounds very European socialism. And that's effectively what it was. And both of these systems, they purported to do the same thing 40 years ago.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I mean, it's insane. Like, it made no sense. And when the human rights campaign started, I don't know, 20 years ago, like, the whole thing was like, okay, like, I don't know, don't make fun of, like, I don't know, LGBTQ+. Okay, fine.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And now to get these perfect scores, then you had to have so many commercials that advertised to LGBT people. You had to do all the gender affirmation stuff in your health.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I mean, that was essentially like what it was becoming. And even the company itself, I mean, they were trying to win these like con line awards over in Europe. And so we used to always think like our advertisements was, did you win the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter Award? That showed like you were in touch with the kind of American consumer.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And for, I mean, from like 2003 to 2013, Amazon Bush won it every single year. Then when they brought in new European ownership and new marketers, all of a sudden they didn't win it for 10 plus years. And, but they tried now start winning and showing they won these con line awards, which over in Europe, they have these awards in con France.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And to win the con line advertising awards, you have to have your DEI and your ESG policies. And you have to do all of the advertisements that are essentially- Why do you care about an award in Cannes, France? You shouldn't. But again, to get included in the BlackRock State Street Vanguard indexes for ESGDI, you can highlight your awards that you won from Con Lion.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
You can highlight your perfect score from the Human Rights Campaign.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I call it the stakeholder capitalism industrial complex. And everybody was just trying to make money. McKinsey, they were the big consulting firm. I mean, they had this, again, this diversity matters, diversity wins report to sell consulting services for DEI. BlackRock had a whole DEI component to put people into certain funds to charge investors more money.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
You had a lot of activists that they wanted to show that they could get more money from Soros or whoever else. that they're making progress by putting up actually activist proposals at companies that shareholders would then vote on. So it was this big, almost like industrial complex just kept feeding on itself. To destroy the meritocracy and destroy the United States.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And almost, I mean, Bud Light was essentially holding the pin when this whole, I mean, bubble popped. They were, this is the first time that people saw like, wait a minute, you know, okay, I didn't like when Disney got involved in the parental rights issues down in Florida, but, you know, Disney is always kind of a little, a little out there.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
They said, we're going to make people more money and lead to better societal outcomes. Problem is, over the last 40 years, I mean, if you just take a look at sort of the U.S. economic model versus Europe since the 1970s, U.S. has trounced Europe on both of those premises.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And it didn't make any sense that Disney was getting involved in this year. Well, it's the same attitude. But kind of same attitude. But the problem with Disney is that, okay, you know, I don't like Disney, but there's only one Disney World. I don't really have a lot of other places to go, so I'm still going to go to Disney World. But with Bud Light, people easily went to Coors Light. Yeah.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And so... Going back to this whole story about why the response was so damaging.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
What do you do? I mean, like the answer is so simple. The first thing you do is that you fire the VP of marketing who just called your entire customer base fratting out of touch. And then you say we fired her because that was obviously not empathetic to our customers and not core business.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
You can't work here. You can't work here. Like, just like, fire. Done. Like, out. And then separately, like the biggest piece is like, then you just apologize. You know, I always say it's like the path.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
But it's like the path to like, I always say like redemption, it goes through forgiveness. Amen. But the only way you're going to be forgiven is if you admit you made a mistake. Exactly. And then what you say is like, hey, this was obviously a mistake that this person made. And so we've moved on from this person because we made a mistake hiring this person, putting them in.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And then separately also, we made a mistake as Bud Light. We made a mistake because Bud Light was never supposed to be involved in controversial political issues. And Dylan Mulvaney was not the right choice of a person to get involved with because there are things, if you recall as well, the week this partnership happened, this was during the time when a lot of legislation is in session.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
So there were, I think, 25 bills across the country to ban biological men from playing against women in sports. There was a bunch of bills banning gender affirmation care. And also leading up to this week, that was the week that you had the transgender shooter in the Christian school in Tennessee.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Right, exactly. So, I mean, this was like a very big issue across the entire country right now. It's a violent group, right? So this is why there was a lot of problems with Dylan Mulvaney, who'd become kind of the face of really the very progressive transgender movement, why Bud Light never should have done the partnership in the first place.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And say, because Bud Light was always about fun and music and sports, we should have never had this person as a sponsorship. Again, they shouldn't have Donald Trump as a sponsor either. Of course, I agree. Just so Bud Light now- You sell beer.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
If you take a look at our stock market returns in the U.S., take an S&P 500, over the last 40 years, we've generated 10% a year on average. Europe broad-based industries are like 6% to 7%. But then in perspective, you had $100,000 invested in the U.S. in 1970 and $100,000 in Europe. In the U.S., it'd be worth $4.5 million today. It'd be worth $1.5 million in Europe.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
We're going to get back to selling beer. Guys, we screwed up. We apologize. We want our customers back. We're selling beer. End of story. The problem is they couldn't do that because they'd made all these other commitments- Why? To the Human Rights Campaign, who they highlighted every single year in their annual ESG report that they had a perfect score on it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
They had made- But the Human Rights Campaign is like- They're not big shareholders of AB.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
But they're a stakeholder of AB, and that becomes the problem. Yeah.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
It all just feeds on itself. It's called the stakeholder capitalism industrial complex. The stakeholder are really the beer drinkers. But that's the problem.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
We can insult them. Your customer became sort of the lowest priority, which is the problem. This made no sense. It made zero sense. And then so again, this partnership originally happened on April 1st. On April 15th, that's when you have the CEO for the first time, a guy named Brendan Whitworth, who I know very well. He made a first public, essentially, response.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And it's almost this comical letter. I think it was called like our letter to America. where he never acknowledged the situation they were in. They never acknowledged the controversy, never mentioned Dylan by name. It was just a, hey, we're going to get back to brewing beer. And here's a video of Clydesdale riding across America.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And I mean, as you can imagine, the outrage was palpable, both on the right from their loyal customers that were like, wait a minute, we wanted that exact kind of apology. And hey, we fired the person I just gave. But then now you have all these people on the left that are saying, wait a minute, I wanted you guys to say you're going to become like Ben and Jerry's. You know,
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I want you guys to be doing more of the Dylan campaign. And so all of a sudden, the company actually, its sales declined even more. And funny enough- Is he still there? He's still there, which is crazy. Everyone is still there. There's been zero accountability for this, despite the fact- I don't understand.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Former CIA guy.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
100%.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
But-
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
So that's a huge difference based on the compounding interest in money. And then separately... If you take a look at the US, you know, Europe might say, okay, well, we didn't make as much money, but do we lead to better societal outcomes? And I would say, no.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
That's amazing. I mean, you spent one evening with him. I spent, I don't know, I've known Brendan for 10 years.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I mean, I think the bigger piece is just, it's the lack of courage. And I think we saw this with a lot of CEOs. And I think especially with Brendan Ware. So he reported into a global CEO, which is this guy, Michel Ducaris, who's European and kind of. I'm sure he's a good guy. Yeah. Yeah. So and I think this is again. Some like French mastermind. But it's a little bit.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
There's a little bit of that where Brendan all of a sudden, like, man, he needed to take a hard stand and say, you know what? We screwed up. We're firing this person. We apologize. We're gonna get back to doing Bud Light commercials that are, you know, fun and humorous, whatever else. And he didn't do it. And he didn't do it that first time in April. There was another really weak type of response.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
But so how does he keep his job? Well, I'll get back to that in a second. But then, like, this was really telling. There was, going into July 4th weekend of 2023, this is the biggest beer selling weekend of the year. Bud Light sales had tanked down 30, 40%. The stocks lost $40 billion in market cap. The business had gone from making $6 billion in profits in the U.S. market.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
It lost $40 billion of market cap. $40 billion? $40 billion of market cap. I mean, the stock was around $70 a share when this happened. It went down to $40 billion.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
$40 billion? You'll love this. Alyssa was placed on leave at some point along this. She's actually now working for Liv in the Liv tour, the Saudi golf tour. Not really. I swear to God. I feel like you can't make this up. Actually? I swear to God. Yeah, I swear to God. So... It's at least on our LinkedIn. It's working for the Live Society Golf Tour. So anyway, we can get to that in a second.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I mean, if you take a look at the US, almost every broad-based prosperity metric, GDP growth, per capita income, interest rates, unemployment rates, the US trounces Europe on all of those. I mean, like our poorest countries in the United States are generally wealthier than most of the European countries on a per capita basis.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
We'll get to that in a second. So going to July 4th, the week of 2023, for the first time, Brendan goes on national TV and he goes on CBS and he has this live interview where he's going to try and get this back on track because he's now missed twice with a response and it's only antagonized people and things have gotten worse.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
So he goes on CBS and one of the hosts first off says, hey, thank you for being here because most people in your seat, they would have run for the hills. I mean, after what we've seen with millions of customers losing, leaving you billions of dollars being lost. But they say, hey, the question everyone wants to know is, was this partnership a mistake and would you do it again?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And he gives some real wishy-washy, mealy-mouthed answer. Well, there's a lot of things going on in the world and culture and this and that. And after 30 seconds of kind of wavering around, the host comes back and says, to be clear, like you do realize the answer you just gave is the reason why millions of people have left, billions of dollars have been erased. Let me ask again.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
was this campaign a mistake, and would you do it again? And again, he gives a completely evasive- $40 billion loss, and he can't say it's a bad idea. Can't say it's a bad idea.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And what's crazy is that literally that exact same week, Dylan, and I feel bad for Dylan in this whole thing, because Dylan essentially comes out and says, hey, if you can't stand by a transgender person, then don't do the campaign. Don't do it. That's worse than not hiring somebody at all, but just don't do it. And so Dylan essentially said it was a mistake because they couldn't stand by it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Larry Fink that week at the Aspen Ideas Festival says, I'm not using the term ESG anymore because it's become too controversial and it's lost its meaning. And you have this now CEO of one of the most iconic companies in the United States, Anheuser-Busch, can't make a direct response about a campaign that has cost this company billions of dollars, millions of customers.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
They had to fire thousands of employees after this. Suppliers shut down. But not the CIA guy. He kept his job. But he's kept his job still. I mean, it still kept his job. I don't understand that. Like, where does the company have a board? Well, this is a problem, but it's a European based board. So it's based over in Europe. It's based in Belgium.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
They still abide by a lot of these different philosophy. And this is where we're coming into an issue. So what's the point of having a head of the company, a president of the company? If you're just going to be a puppet. That's the problem.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And that's where I almost think that for a lot of companies, I think, and especially specifically, I think their company's actually better off probably selling its U.S. business unit at this point. Because I don't think you can serve this European system. But it's so damaged. Well, it is, but I think people love a great American comeback story. I agree. They do.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And so over the last sort of 40 years, you kind of had these two systems that were developing. And the U.S. model, to me, is just the superior model. I mean, I believe in American exceptionalism. I think our American model works. The problem is with the American model is every once in a while, there are kind of bumps in the system, bumps in the road.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
But to make that story, you have to admit again that there was a mistake and that you screwed up and that you've taken accountability for it and that we now have a different plan. It doesn't matter how much money the company has subsequently spent on, I mean, it's $100 million for Dana White and the UFC. They've hired Shane Gillis. They've hired Peyton Manning.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
They've done all these things to try and get their customer back. But all the customer wants is, like, guys, to say you screwed up.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
August Bush III? Yeah, the third. One of the best meetings I've ever been in my entire life.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And the last time we had kind of a real economic bump in the road, let's call it was 2008, 2009. Yeah, it's sort of the great financial crisis that happens. And after the great financial crisis, there's sort of a lot of people that were upset that banks got bailed out. It seemed like Main Street was the one that sort of that lost out, people lost houses.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I completely agree. I mean, the Budweiser, they said they almost had Budweiser in their veins. I think there was a whole story that when you're born, they let you give you a thimble of Budweiser. It's like the first thing I think you drink. Yes.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Yeah, shouldn't be here. So completely agree. And I think that's one of the problems that we have is that even here, and there's a bunch of other brands as well. I mean, like Jeep's another great one. Jeep's owned by now Stellantis, which is based over in the Netherlands.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And you're talking about, man, if you're going to have an American brand like Jeep, should that really be owned by the Europeans? They just have a completely different philosophical system here. And they just have the European mindset. This is very different. Like tiny little electric cars, little gay cars. It's so weird. You might be seeing a little mini jeep. Yes, yes.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I have an eight-year-old daughter. She used to have one of those like Barbie jeeps.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
No, it's like, no, it's fine.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Yeah, and that's okay. And give that customer that regular Jeep as well. And so, I don't know. This is where I think also these companies also need to go to. Actually, another company that's actually done a pretty good job of navigating a lot of the cultural wars is actually Netflix, a lot of credit.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
If you remember, there was two or three years ago, Netflix was getting a lot of pressure to cancel Dave Chappelle. Remember when there was this Dave Chappelle special?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Well, a lot of other people wanted to cancel Dave Chappelle because he had jokes about the LGBTQ and a million other communities, by the way. I mean, Dave Chappelle doesn't leave anybody unscathed. And there was a lot of pressure.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Yeah, he was tough.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
But, you know, that's, hey, it's freedom of speech in the country. I agree.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
But the thing I at least give Netflix credit for is when all of this was going on, they were told to cancel Chappelle. They came out with this culture of excellence document. And this Culture of Excellence document essentially said, like, we are not going to censor artists at Netflix.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
We are going to put out content for liberals, conservatives, whatever, you kind of name it, and people will watch whatever they want to watch. But we are not going to censor it at Netflix. And if you have an issue with that, then go work somewhere else. And I actually give Netflix a lot of credit for that because they're based in California and everything else. And that's great.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And so all of a sudden, business and capitalism kind of has to repair itself and repair its image. And the way that it did that is, especially if you remember the Occupy Wall Street movement, you know, Occupy Wall Street and everyone else says, okay, well, banks and financiers and companies, they need to be a bigger part of the system and making sure that everybody can succeed.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Yeah, that's it. They didn't play that. But then also, well, I guess it was Amazon that picked up the Melania Trump deal. But great, like put it all out there. I mean, who cares? America's watch whatever they want. And so I give them a lot of credit for that. I think that that's also where Anheuser-Busch kind of needs to go as well is to say, listen, we have a whole portfolio of beers.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I mean, hell, we have King Cobra 40-ounce bottles. That is for a certain person. Yeah.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I do. I do.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
No, they were not putting it on King Keef. That would be hilarious. That would be awesome. That would be amazing. Bring that back. A pinup of Dylan Mulvaney on a King Cobra. Totally.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Yeah, that would. That'd be amazing. That would take some balls. That'd take some balls. So, yeah, but they also have Goose Island. Goose Island in Chicago, they have a Sounds Queer, I'm in IPA. And fine, you're in Chicago, and that's what people want. Great. Give them to those folks for your craft beers as well. I've never had it. I don't know.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
There's a beer advocate thing that just is one of these websites that rates beers. They say it's great. So great. They can do that as well.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Oh, yeah. I have it. I have it in my, I actually treated emails.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
It's great. So I like it a lot. I actually traded emails with Bill Shufeld, who's the CEO. That's exactly who I like. What a good guy. Yeah, great guy. So it's funny because he's done an amazing job, and I respect the company. But the product is just so good. The product is very good. Great product. I wrote a post.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
He got almost a billion-dollar valuation for this company in his latest round, and I just disagreed with the valuation. I do some consumer investing. So I wrote a post about, like, hey, great job. Kudos, congratulations. Here's why I don't think it's going to be a $3 billion company. He had some issues with my post, but...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I don't know.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Oh, really?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
It was the least good, but they were all, yeah, they were amazing. Yeah, and it's opened up what, non-alcoholic beer, you see, I mean, it was terrible. I never had one. It was so bad. It felt so degrading. It was kind of a joke. Now that feels like a Dylan Mulvaney segment. Yeah, You know what I mean? That's what it was. That was essentially what non-alcohol beer was.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
At the same time, then you had Obama was the president and he came up with some diversity, equity, inclusion mandates that were happening within sort of the broader base government. And for the next three or four or five years, you see a lot of companies that are trying to repair the image of so-called business and capitalism in the United States.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And he totally just reframed what it can be, where it can be good, cool. You have it after a run, you feel better. Like actually delicious. Actually delicious. And there's this whole movement now. I mean, it's, it's crazy. My, I, even though I'm categorized a millennial, you know, I like to identify as the greatest generation here, Tucker, but you know, like,
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I take it I'm categorized as a millennial. But my cohort, I think 80% of us used to drink alcohol when we were in our 20s. And now that Gen Z is in their 20s, only 60% of them is drinking alcohol. Is that true? Yes. I mean, there's been a massive drop off in the number of people drinking alcohol.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And then across all cohorts, Gen Z, millennial, Gen X, boomers, everyone's generally drinking less also because people are just becoming more health conscious. So he's doing a great job of picking up a lot of those people that still like the taste of beer or the occasion of beer, but they just don't want to drink a six pack of beer and feel like trash.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I'm getting very television-y now, but like, yeah. And actually, beer complements food a lot better than wine does. Yes, it does. Because it's so diverse. Because you have lagers and porters and stouts and IPAs. Usually with wines, you're kind of red and white, and that's about it. But there, it actually does a much better job with food.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Probably not at lunch. I don't know. I feel... Brendan was more of like a, you know, he would drink Budweiser like here and there, maybe one or so, but I think he was much more into the, you know, muscle milk and that was kind of his, you know, his thing. So. Come on now. I don't know, man. And again, it's, Brendan should have been more courageous. I don't know.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Like the guy, he took a company that was doing $6 billion of profits and now doing $4 billion of profits. I mean, just there, you've lost $2 billion. You're still here. That's the problem. What is that?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
No one's ever fired it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
military. Well, but I think this is perfect. Again, when you control this European corporation, they think they're doing a good thing. By trying to get involved in pushing more of the political issues. Also, I think there's something to be said is that when you, I don't know, reach a certain level of wealth and money and you're, you know, billionaire type class. Well, that's it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
You want to be part of the right social circles. Doesn't actually matter to you. That's it. And I think that's part of it because the whole company is more controlled by these Belgian families and a couple of Brazilian families as well. And now their kids are on the board. And I think it's just being in the right social circle.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
McKinsey came out with a famous study that says diversity wins, where they said we're going to have, let's force sort of diversity initiatives on a lot of companies, and those ones would do better. This study has been thoroughly debunked. You had a lot of asset management companies, the BlackRock, State Streets, Vanguards of the world. They started...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
You know, I've never met them.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
That's it. He's a genius. You know, so this is the bigger issue. And then what's even funny about Brendan, I mean, you almost feel bad for Dillman. You almost feel bad for Brendan because Kid Rock actually went on Rogan's show. And essentially, he had a big conversation with Brendan as well.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And he was talking about how he's, you know, Kid Rock was making fun of him for the whole CBS interview he did. And he's like, I don't get it, man. Like, why did you just get up there and you were like a puppet? And essentially, this Kid Rock's words and telling the story was like, Brendan said he was coached. He was like, yeah, I was coached. I have to say what I have to say.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Like, that's what's problematic. And again, this is where you come back to this fundamental, just like disconnect between the American sort of way and American business and the European way. He was essentially coached.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I mean, who's winning? It's, again, I think a lot of the board members. China's winning. China's probably winning in this thing. I don't know if this is like as much of a, China is winning. I don't know if they have much to do with this. I think it's more of this, again, out of touch.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Exactly.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Well, but again, but I think the winners are more the Chinas. Well, yeah, big picture. Because, I mean, if you almost think about it, I mentioned this earlier, but the U.S. was always exceptional. It's always been this city upon a hill that people want to go to. It's always been unique and distinct and different.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And there have been, you know, it's always been radical ideas in the United States to have free speech and American capitalism and freedom of religion. These have all been radical ideas for a long time. And that's allowed us to become the most successful, prosperous, you name it, country.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And I think that there's been ways that sort of the Europeans, the Chinese, others, they've been able to infiltrate that and try and rebalance. I mean, going into a… the so-called oppressor versus oppressed framework. For the rest of the world, this U.S. was always this oppressor-type country. We're always oppressed. How do you rebalance? Well, you try and social engineer.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Really talking more about environmental social governance issues, which is a term that was coined in 2005, really never went anywhere. The United Nations originally coined it. You know, if the United Nations coined something, usually, you know, be skeptical of it. Didn't go anywhere for the first five or 10 years.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
You try and... You get the country to kill itself. Yeah. I mean, that's essentially the way that you do it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Sorry. Because I love everyone. Everyone's great. Sorry. No, it's... I'm not going to correct it all.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Yeah. I mean, so I think that is what's going on is that you have, obviously, you know, governments that are antagonists towards the United States are trying to China, Europe, et cetera, trying to kind of pull us back, tear us down. But even a lot of these other companies as well, unfortunately, just have a different view of what business should be.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And I don't think it's going to be good for the business units in the US. It's bad for everybody.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
You know, Tucker, there's a short story to it, and there's a long story. I mean, I'll give you the short version, and then we can get into the longer version of what happened. Great. But, you know, I mean, the short version is it used to be a great American, you know, company. This was owned by the Bush family. The Bush family had started this thing in the 1850s.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I'm not surprised by that. It's so weird. What's the point of making billions of dollars if you're miserable? Because he doesn't have any principles. Because if you take a look at BlackRock, it's just been blowing in the wind over the last couple of years. When it was all about the ESG and stakeholder capitalism, we're going to hold that flag and we're going to carry it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
But then as soon as people just with principles think about saying, guys, you're violating your fiduciary obligation because I just asked you to make money for me, not do social engineering policies that are losing money for me. And so when all of a sudden people started pulling their money from them, they got pulled in front of Congress by a bunch of politicians.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Now, all of a sudden, Larry Fink is backing away. He says, I don't see ESG anymore. He pulled DEI off their website.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
But after the Occupy Wall Street movement, a lot of big asset managers kind of picked up this term, started talking about environmental social governance issues. And really, a lot of these issues picked up tons of steam when Trump was first elected.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Yeah, I don't know. It's just because he's lines his own pockets along the way. I guess.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
You know, you used to work at Fox in New York. A lot of people literally say, I wouldn't say I worked in Fox. Who's Kat Timpf? She used to tell people she worked in the porn industry instead of saying Fox News in New York City. Exactly.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
But I think especially when you're in New York, if you want to go to the right schools and go to the right parties and get your kids into this and that, like you can't be patriotic in a lot of cases. I know. And you can't stand up. Of course.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
The German girl from Harvard. I can't believe that hasn't been picked up, but let's say the Hindenburg ones. I haven't heard that one. No, I was thinking of Paul von Hindenburg, not the blimp. I thought you were thinking of the blimp.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
No, I agree. It's almost you have to be apologetic about being here.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And when Trump was first elected and he pulled out of these supranational organizations, the Paris Climate Accords, pulled out of the human rights sort of campaign coalitions, all of a sudden, a lot of these more progressive institutions that said, wait a minute, like we thought government was going to solve these existential crises of climate change and banking systems and systemic racism and you kind of name it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Like, you can't do that. Yeah. You know, I mean, the greatest sort of asset that we have in this country, it is the American dream. I mean, that is that is the greatest asset. Why people want to move here, why people want to invest here, why people want to be here. And there's a lot of other people that want to tear down that American dream.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
They want to make you feel like they're all Americans who want to.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Well, I think the pendulum's swinging back. So we've got a lot of people that have finally— I hope that's right. You know, I think a lot of brave people. It's been amazing to see what's happened in Silicon Valley over the last year or two. For sure. I agree. These are a lot of smart, bright people that were afraid to stick their neck out there.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
I mean, thank God for Elon that all of a sudden came around, and he gave people the ability to put their neck out there also.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Make a product. You can hold in your hand. And it's a great product. And whether you like alcohol or not like alcohol, I mean, Budweiser, to some degree, was the American dream in a bottle.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
You've got to be the only person who hasn't drank a beer in 25 years that can recite that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Yeah.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Thank you. . . . . . . ., . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ad- , I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Now all of a sudden they're not, and we need business to do this. And by the way, a lot of progressive pension funds, state of California, state of New York, European sovereign wealth funds like Norway and others, they have collectively trillions of dollars of assets.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And they said, okay, now if these, a lot of these banks that had all of a sudden started talking more about environmental, social governance issues, we're going to manage money on our behalf. We wanted them to solve a lot of the existential crises in this country that Trump was not going to do in 2016. And at that time period, you had a really interesting thing that happened.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
We've been with BlackRock. Quite. The largest asset management company in the world. Managed about over $10 trillion worth of capital. And what was interesting is BlackRock was really one of the leaders of this movement, along with State Street, Vanguard, those three largest asset managers in this entire country, managed about $20 trillion worth of assets.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
They're the single largest shareholder in 95% of the S&P 500. And they wield a lot of influence in terms of telling companies kind of what to do. And the problem with a lot of these big asset managers is that it's not their own money that they're managing.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
You know, if this was like George Soros type money or, you know, Bill Gates, like it's their own money and they, you know, ask companies to do all types of crazy things. But the problem was with BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard is they were managing, I mean, a lot of times like your money, my money through 401ks or pension funds or others.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
You know, this is the same time you had the Carnegies, the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers. You didn't have any of those folks still in the, I don't know, 20 years ago, but the Bush family was actually still running Anheuser-Busch 20 years ago, which is crazy. I think they actually have houses right around here, as a matter of fact. I know them. Yeah, you probably know them well.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And because of their largest sort of clients, which again are more the progressive pension funds than others, are telling them that they want business to get more involved in politics and social issues, then all of a sudden they're starting to force a new agenda on corporations, telling companies that we want you guys to get more involved in environmental, social, and governance issues.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And they even changed the purpose of a corporation in the 2018, 2019 time period. There was a famous letter that Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock wrote in 2018, essentially telling companies that we want them to now earn their social license.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
and you're going to do that because we have evolved the purpose of a corporation with a group known as the business round table in the united states to be more focused on your stakeholders so you're no longer focused on shareholders we want you to focus on stakeholders and that is now who you are now going to focus on for maximizing value without defining again who those stakeholders are
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And so this becomes very, very problematic in this sort of 2018, 2019 timeframe because companies are frankly confused. And it set up really a lot of, I'll call it kindling for an event that happened in 2020, which was COVID. And all of a sudden companies are being told they need to earn their social license.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
They're being told that now no longer your shareholders, your kind of primary person that you're serving, but you're now serving all stakeholders without defining what that is. And in the 2020 time period, now all of a sudden you have this event of COVID. And when COVID happens, you just call this a crazy time period. We don't need to go through all of it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
But companies, frankly, like lost their sense of direction about who were they serving, what their mission is. And you remember we all had to flatten the curve and, you know, the so-called flatten the curve in early 2020. And companies were essentially- Except for the George Floyd rioters who- We're under no such obligation, I notice. Correct. But that's obviously after this.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
But, you know, in March of 2020, I mean, almost every company lost what its mission was. What do I mean by that? Well, let's go back to what, at Anheuser-Busch, we were making hand sanitizer in 2020 all of a sudden because we need to flatten this curve and we're all in this existential crisis of COVID. Right.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
uh you had delta airlines no longer flying passengers but now flying medical supplies all around you had uh general motors which is now making ventilators for for the country walmart setting up covet testing facilities so all of these companies all of a sudden were told to focus on a lot of different initiatives besides just their typical products and services and frankly like a lot of these efforts like you think about like the curve was flattened very quickly you know there was no like real existential crisis like we thought there was but the problem was that since all these companies had kind of been pushed off their mission
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
um and so the short story very nice people very nice i'm not everyone in the family but some of the people it's a big family one of the former presidents great man yeah it's a it's a big family so and long story short i mean the company got so big and at some point it's owned sea world bush gardens you know eight helicopters ten private jets we got a little bit bloated so it got taken over by this uh belgian company european company called inbev inbev came in and bought it in 2008.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Then we had this next issue, which was the George Floyd issue that pops up in May of 2020. And George Floyd, you know, George Floyd dies. And now the next existential crisis that every single company in the United States is looking to solve is systemic racism.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
because their largest so-called shareholders in the black rock state streets vanguards of the world who had told them that now we want you focused on solving more of these stakeholder and societal issues we need you to now solve these issues i mean you went down the list i mean it was crazy after george floyd was was murdered you had 70 different companies in the united states here donated over 200 billion dollars to black lives matter in the united states that's like more than the gdp of portugal which is crazy in terms of the amount of money that was donated to these causes
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And banking donations just wasn't enough. I mean, even Zuckerberg and Facebook at the time donated some eight-figure sum to it. But then when that summer Trump had the famous tweet about when the looting starts, the shooting starts, then everybody wanted him to now all of a sudden take Trump off of Facebook because it just wasn't enough just to donate. You actually had to silence folks as well.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
On top of that, in 2020, 2021, you had the BlackRock's and State Street's, Vanguard's the world as well. Not only are they, this is where the big problem comes in, is because they are controlled, the largest percentage of companies in the United States, they have disproportionate power.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
to advocate for policies at companies, and then most importantly, to vote for shareholder proposals at companies, where if you own $25,000 of stock in any company in the United States, you can put up what's known as a shareholder proposal that the so-called shareholders of the company, they can vote on.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And what was crazy is in 2020, 2021, you had a lot of these activists that because the purpose of this corporation had changed in the United States, away from shareholder value to this European stakeholder model, said, okay, now businesses, again, they have to maximize value for me.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
So you saw there's a group called Color of Change, and it's a nonprofit group, and their mission is to stamp out systemic racism in the country. You know, okay, fine. Like, you know, you can do that, you're whatever.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
But like they went to Apple, they bought $25,000 worth of shares at Apple, you know, and they put up this shareholder proposal that said, hey, you Apple, we want you guys to do a racial equity audit to figure out how you've contributed to systemic racism and white supremacy in the country.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And Apple, which is, you know, pretty liberal leftist board, you know, company of Tim Cook is a CEO and very liberal board. They said, guys, like, thanks, but no thanks, because Apple's mission is to make magical devices at unbelievable prices. Like, that's what we just do. You know, that's our thing.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
These are important issues, but we're going to recommend against this proposal because we don't want to spend tens of millions of dollars hiring, you know, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch to go and do a racial equity audit. But this passed by 52 to 48 percent because you had firms like BlackRock, which is the second largest shareholder of the company, voted for it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
You know, Vanguard, State Street, everyone else are voting for these issues and forcing corporate America to now get involved in social and political issues. And this went the same thing for election integrity law issues that people were asking companies to get involved in, defund the police initiatives, help PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
They put up a proposal telling Starbucks we don't use cow milk anymore. because we don't think you should use cow milk at Starbucks. I mean, it's crazy. All these proposals that popped up in this post sort of COVID George Floyd era, and companies were essentially forced by these large asset managers to get involved in a lot of political and social issues. So that was sort of the backdrop.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
And the cultures really changed, whereas Anheuser-Busch was all about growing the brands, understood the U.S. consumer, Budweiser, Bud Light, all these things. InBev has had a different mentality. They're much more of a, they call it the world's largest private equity from the happen to sell beer.