Ted Cruz called on Anheuser-Busch’s CEO to investigate Bud Light’s controversial marketing partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, raising concerns that the transgender social media star’s audience consists mainly of minors.
In a Wednesday letter to Anheuser-Busch CEO Brandon Whitwowrth, the Republican senator from Texas and US Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee claimed that Mulvaney commands an “audience [that] skews significantly younger than the legal drinking age.”
The letter cited Mulvaney’s “Days of Girlhood” series on Instagram and TikTok, where Mulvaney boasts 1.8 million and 10.8 million followers, respectively.
In one video, was “lip-syncing ‘I am Eloise, I am 6’ while dressed as a small child,” according to the letter. In another that got more than 11 million views, Mulvaney was “‘at the mall’ giving away merchandise and cash to teenage girls, at least one of whom was still in braces,” the letter claimed.
In yet another TikTok video, Mulvaney was shopping at Target for Barbie dolls — which according to the letter markets to “young girls of 3-12 years of age.”
“The use of the phrase ‘Girlhood’ was not a slip of the tongue but rather emblematic of a series of Mulvaney’s online content that was specifically used to target, market to, and attract an audience of young people who are well below the legal drinking age in the United States,” Cruz and Blackburn wrote in the letter.
The letter, signed on behalf of the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, cited marketing guidelines under the Beer Institute, an industry trade group, which dictate that “brewers should employ the perspective of the reasonable adult consumer of legal drinking age in advertising and marketing their products.”
The US Senate Committee’s letter requested that Whitworth produce documents related to Anheuser-Busch’s relationship with Mulvaney by the end of the month.
It asked for all communications related to partnerships between the beer brand and the influencer, including scripts for social media and after-the-fact audits showing Mulvaney’s age demographics on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
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The letter also urged Whitworth “to avoid a lengthy investigation by the Beer Institute by instead having Anheuser-Busch publicly sever its relationship with Dylan Mulvaney, publicly apologize to the American people for marketing alcoholic beverages to minors and direct Dylan Mulvaney to remove any Anheuser-Busch content from his social media platforms.”
Mulvaney’s post with Bud Light remains on her Instagram page.
As of Wednesday, it has more than 3.3 million views and tens of thousands of comments.
Anheuser-Busch did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Anheuser-Busch’s parent company, AB InBev, has scrambled to distance itself from Mulvaney in recent weeks.
AB InBev CEO Michel Doukeris said “it was one can, one influencer, one post and not a campaign,” in reference to an April 1 Instagram post where Mulvaney shared a custom Bud Light can with her face on it and sparked a type of culture war.
Mulvaney had written “#budlightpartner” in the caption of her Instagram post and promoted the beer brand’s “Easy Carry Contest” in honor of March Madness.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
