The Tucker Carlson Show
Anson Frericks: Bud Light’s Fall & Comeback Attempt, Zyn’s DEI Agenda, & Why Big Business Hates You
Mon, 07 Apr 2025
Former Anheuser-Busch executive Anson Frericks watched as Bud Light committed suicide by woke white lady. It’s a gruesome story. Anson is the author of "Last Call for Bud Light: The Fall and Future of America's Favorite Beer." (00:00) The Fall of Anheuser-Busch (02:20) The Evils of Stakeholder Capitalism (10:42) How Covid and George Floyd Changed the Business World Forever (15:40) How Obama Destroyed the Middle Class and Made the Rich Richer (19:19) Zyn’s DEI and LGBTQ Agenda (29:14) The Companies You’re Giving Money to Hate You (35:55) The Pronoun Police Paid partnerships with: MeriwetherFarms: Visit https://MeriwetherFarms.com/Tucker and use code TUCKER2025 for 10% off your first order. Heritage Foundation: https://Heritage.org/Tucker PreBorn: To donate please dial pound two-fifty and say keyword "BABY" or visit https://preborn.com/TUCKER Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: How did Anheuser-Busch lose its way?
So, what happened to Anheuser-Busch? Like, what is it? If you don't mind, since you've thought about this probably more than any living person, how exactly did a company, an American company like that, that you felt like had a sense of the country that it served, go off in a direction that was so obviously crazy and self-destructive? Like, how could that happen? Yeah.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 –
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Chapter 2: What is stakeholder capitalism and how did it affect American companies?
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.
Okay, so, I mean, you're describing so many American companies, by the way. Yeah. That trajectory downward. But at the end of the story, there was this revealing moment where Anheuser-Busch executives, or one of them, basically just admitted, I hate our consumers. And you wonder like, where does that mind?
I mean, people have all kinds of dumb ideas about business and dumb ideas about everything else. But if you're in the retail business, if you're selling products to consumers and you find yourself in a place where you're like, let's piss them off and humiliate them. Like that's so obviously insane. Like how could that, how could anybody say something like that?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Chapter 3: How did the events of 2020 impact business strategies?
So you ended up with less money, but you were charged more for doing it, which is crazy.
And, you know, it's really funny that- So do you think it would, since you've studied this much more than I have, do you think it would be a mistake to think that there was any sincerity behind this?
Like, do you think there was ever a moment where, like, Larry Finker, for that matter, Tim Cook, or anybody at State Street or Vanguard thought, you know, we're going to solve systemic racism by attacking the white working class. Like, we're actually going to solve this problem. Do you think they really thought that?
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 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...
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.
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.
America's lip pillow.
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.
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Chapter 4: What role does DEI play in corporate America?
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.
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.
Did everyone buy into the pronoun thing? Did anyone say I'm not doing that? No.
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.
Cowards.
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.
What are you really saying, by the way, when you announce your pronouns? What you're saying is it's not evident to people watching what your sex is? Yeah. Like your pat or something from Saturday Night Live? Like, you may not know this, but I'm a man. Like, you can't tell by looking at me, but I'm actually a man. It's like the most degrading thing I can imagine.
I completely agree. And... you know
Thank you.
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Chapter 5: How did Zyn's DEI agenda affect its business?
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.
Yeah, whose manifesto we weren't allowed to see.
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.
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.
Just sell your beer.
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.
They had made- But the Human Rights Campaign is like- They're not big shareholders of AB.
No, but- They have no right to run a beer company.
But they're a stakeholder of AB, and that becomes the problem. Yeah.
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Chapter 6: Why are some companies pushing for social issues?
They didn't play the Obamas.
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.
I mean, hell, we have King Cobra 40-ounce bottles. That is for a certain person. Yeah.
But then we also have craft breweries like Goose Island. So they make King Cobra 40s. And again, I don't drink. I'm opposed to alcohol. But I love that I live in a country that still makes King Cobra 40s.
I do. I do.
I can't help it. And I assume they weren't pushing Dylan Mulvaney on King Cobra drinkers.
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.
If Alyssa Schopenhauer, whatever her name is, like, I think King Cobra drinkers are out of touch. That would take some balls.
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.
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Chapter 7: What happened with Bud Light's marketing strategy?
Whatever. The last president of Germany. The one who handed it to the Nazis, actually. No, people like that. And it's not just her. Of course, it's an entire class of people who I've lived around my whole life. I know them and I know their attitudes and they're all like they just hate the country. There's like a gut level contempt for the United States.
And it's like, what did America ever do to you? Actually, a ton of opportunity. You made way more than you deserved. Your life is a lot easier than it would have been in any other place. What are you mad about? But they all feel that way.
No, I agree. It's almost you have to be apologetic about being here.
But they work to undermine it. They want to wreck it. Like, what's America? It's a meritocracy. It's like that's the whole promise of immigration, by the way. Immigration only works in a meritocracy. It's like the smartest, most ambitious, fairest, most decent people around the world get to move here and just kick ass. OK, everyone's for that.
We're not going to, like, move hundreds of thousands of Haitians into your neighborhood just to wreck it.
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.
They want to make you feel like they're all Americans who want to.
I just find it. It's so strange. If they took that destructive energy and focused it on our actual enemies, whoever those might be, you know, we could get a lot done. That stuff is more dangerous than nuclear weapons.
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.
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