Fact Check: Did Anheuser-Busch CEO Resign Over Bud Light Fallout?

Earlier this month, popular social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney—who is transgender—posted a video celebrating being the recipient of one of hundreds of individually customized Bud Light cans the Anheuser-Busch brand had provided to a number of paid partners.

The company had provided similar cans to 199 other influencers, all of which went unnoticed. Mulvaney's can, however, ignited a media firestorm fueled by conservative outrage a brand would partner with someone who was transgender.

Singer Kid Rock filmed a video of him shooting Bud Light cans with a gun. Some rolled over cases of Bud Light with steamrollers while figures like onetime Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake claimed mass boycotts at political events with Republicans. Beer sales representatives posted videos of them lamenting they wouldn't be able to feed their families, blaming Anheuser-Busch for "going woke" and killing their livelihoods.

As the company's sales allegedly collapsed from the stunt, some seized on a headline claiming the company's CEO had resigned in disgrace from the company over the stunt, with some calling it a fair penalty for egregiously misreading their customer base.

But is it true?

The Claim

Did Anheuser-Busch's CEO resign over the Bud Light fallout?

The Facts

As the controversy raged online, some on social media began posting an article from a website called the "Dunning Kruger Times" claiming the company's CEO, Augustus Anheuser III, had resigned his position as head of the company in disgrace as a result of the Mulvaney fiasco.

"The whole thing is ultimately my fault," Anheuser allegedly said. "I should have never approved that campaign."

Some online seized on the article as an example of the major company misreading its target demographic as part of a so-called trend of companies going woke and then, subsequently, going broke.

"Does anyone really believe that it's just a 'coincidence' this is happening on Easter weekend? God will not be mocked!!" one commenter on the story wrote.

"Some of us aren't stupid. We don't stay in abusive relationships," another commenter wrote. "If it was my last day on Earth and the last drink available was a Bud Light I'd rather die. There's nothing they can do to repair it now. There's a line and they crossed it. Enjoy bankruptcy."

The problem is, the story was completely untrue.

Augustus Anheuser III is not CEO of Anheuser-Busch. Brendan Whitworth is. And while there is a person named August Anheuser Busch III, he retired from the company's day-to-day operations in 2006.

The claim that the Anheuser-Busch CEO resigned "is inaccurate and there is no truth to it," the company told the Associated Press in a statement Monday.

A stronger clue might have been the source itself. According to its own website, the Dunning Kruger Times is a subsidiary of the "America's Last Line of Defense" network of parody, satire, and "tomfoolery" websites.

If that wasn't clear enough, the source of their name is derived from the so-called "Dunning-Kruger Effect," a cognitive bias in psychology where people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain "greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence."

The Ruling

Satire.

The post was clearly satire, with very little bearing on the available factual evidence.

We rate this claim as satire.

FACT CHECK BY NEWSWEEK