Basketball legend Charles Barkley went on a profanity-filled rant over the weekend against those who have criticized Bud Light over its partnership with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
In video that circulated on social media on Monday, Barkley offered to buy a round of drinks for the crowd at a bar in Lake Tahoe, Calif., where he was reportedly competing in a celebrity golf tournament.
“So I’m gonna buy some drinks for y’all and I’m gonna buy Bud Light,” he said.
“Hey, lemme tell you something. All you rednecks or a–holes who don’t want to drink Bud Light, f— y’all. Hey, y’all can’t cancel me!” he added to a mixture of cheers and boos.
“Hey, I ain’t worried about getting canceled because lemme tell you something, if y’all fire me and gimme all that money, I’m gonna be playing golf every f—ing day. So listen, as I said last night: If you’re gay, God bless you. If you’re trans, God bless you. And if you have a problem with them, f— you.”
Conservatives have dug in against Bud Light over an Instagram ad featuring Mulvaney earlier this year. The brand recently fell from its spot as the top-selling beer brand in the U.S. for the first time in more than two decades.
Marcel Marcondes, Anheuser-Busch’s global chief marketing officer, said that the controversy was a “wake-up call” to how things can get “divisive and controversial so easily.”
In a video posted to TikTok last month, Mulvaney accused Anheuser-Busch of not having her back amid the right-wing backlash.
“For a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse in my opinion than not hiring a trans person at all because it gives customers permission to be as transphobic and hateful as they want,” Mulvaney said in her video. “And the hate doesn’t end with me.”
“I should have made this video months ago, but I didn’t. And I was scared. And I was scared of more backlash and I felt personally guilty for what transpired,” she added. “So I patiently waited for things to get better. But surprise — they haven’t really. And I was waiting for the brand to reach out to me, but they never did.”