As Florida governor Ron DeSantis announced his intention to halt his presidential candidacy in 2024, he inadvertently cited a Budweiser commercial but credited it to Winston Churchill, a former prime minister of the United Kingdom.
X (formerly Twitter) was where DeSantis announced that he was quitting his presidential candidacy last Sunday. In the video, he discussed the ongoing presidential campaign and his intentions to back former president Donald Trump. He concluded his remarks by quoting what he thought Churchill once said.
A user on X pointed out that the remark in DeSantis’s video came from a 1938 Budweiser commercial and was never said by Churchill. Both of these are generally thought to have been spoken by Winston Churchill.
According to the International Churchill Society, they are not in his canon.
The advertisement from Budweiser that DeSantis utilized on Sunday may be seen in a 1939 copy of Life Magazine that can be viewed on Google Books.
The clumsy quotation attribution by DeSantis follows his long history of criticism of Anheuser-Busch, the parent business of Budweiser and Bud Light, after their partnership with transgender activist and influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
As part of his effort to challenge hegemonic progressive ideology, DeSantis attacked Bud Light throughout his presidential campaign, pledging to abstain from the beer company in the wake of their alliance with Mulvaney.
DeSantis said in June 2023 at an event held at a Nevada bar that he would serve anything but Bud Light.
In July, media outlets received a communication that DeSantis had addressed to the Florida pension fund manager, in which he said that Anheuser-Busch InBev had violated its legal obligations to its shareholders by forming a partnership with Mulvaney and urged the management to investigate and perhaps sue the corporation.
According to DeSantis, InBev and Bud Light would be the targets of his investigation.
In a July 2023 appearance with Fox News’s Jesse Watters Primetime, DeSantis said it might be the catalyst for a derivative lawsuit brought on behalf of the Florida pension fund. DeSantis said there must be consequences for putting social agendas ahead of business and sacrificing industrious individuals.
