On Monday, former Biden White House flack turned MSNBC host Jen Psaki pushed a wild conspiracy theory that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito sold his shares of Anheuser-Busch in solidarity with a boycott of Bud Light all because of a mysterious tweet. Of course, she made these allegations without a shred of evidence; she didn’t even show the tweet.
In April of last year, a trans social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a video with Bud Light cans a part of a March Madness ad campaign. The video went viral and Bud Lights sales dropped almost immediately as a national boycott ensued, causing Anheuser-Busch’s stock price to drop.
According to Psaki, four months later, and unidentified “anti-LGBTQ influencer” allegedly posted a “pre-transition photograph” of Mulvaney (she huffed that the post “disgustingly referred to her as ‘a dude’”). It was that tweet that supposedly triggered Alito’s sell off.
“So, an anti-trans boycott breaks out because of one post by one trans influencer and a Supreme Court Justice sells his shares in the company she was endorsing and buys shares from their competitor. I mean just totally normal Supreme Court Justice kind of stuff,” she scoffed.
Psaki provided no evidence that this tweet was the reason Alito sold his shares. She couldn’t prove he ever saw the tweet; he doesn’t even have a X account.
A more reasonable explanation for Alito’s sell off? Bud Light was suffering from an ongoing boycott. Sales were down because people were adamant about not buying from Bud Light but they wanted their financial support to go somewhere that would hurt Bud Light. Because of this, people became more interested in buying beer from Molson Coors – Bud Lights biggest competitor. People wanted to support Coors as a way to financially hurt Bud Light even more. This lead to Coors having global net sales that amounted to $11.7 billion.
The reason for Justice Alito selling his shares was probably more related to the fact that Bud Light had lost over $1.4 billion in sales. If an individual’s stock drops then they sell that stock and usually buy a rising stock that is projected to do better than the stock they originally had.
Very few people would want to buy or keep stock of a company that was being boycotted and actively losing money. When one company is boycotted, other companies tend to have a surge in sales and in this case it was Coors. Coors reported that their brand volume grew by 23 percent in the U.S.
Psaki's speculation on Alito's stock transactions lacked the likelihood of the Justice seeing a post on a platform he did not have an account for. The reality of his financial actions may be because he was losing money and there was a better stock to buy into.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
MSNBC’s Inside with Jen Psaki
05/20/24
8:57:14 pm
JEN PSAKI: You might recall that in April of last year, a trans social media influencer named Dylan Mulvaney posted this video, the one you can see on the screen with some Bud light cans she was sent as part of a March Madness campaign.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Bud Light Boycott Resurfaces with New Reporting]
Now, you may also remember that the video started a firestorm of hate from the right and even a boycott of the beer and the company that produces it, Anheuser-Busch. Bud Light sales plunged in the weeks following Mulvaney’s Instagram video because of anti-trans outrage on the right.
So, fast-forward to April of last year, four months after the original video was posted. That is when an anti-LGBTQ influencer posted a quote “pre-transition photograph” of Dylan Mulvaney and disgustingly referred to her as “a dude.” Well the very next day, on April 14th, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito reportedly sold his shares of share of Anheuser-Busch. He also bought shares of their competitor, Molson Coors. That is all according to financial disclosure filings first reported by lawdork.com -- best name ever.
So, an anti-trans boycott breaks out because of one post by one trans influencer and a Supreme Court Justice sells his shares in the company she was endorsing and buys shares from their competitor. We saw that all from financial disclosures. I mean just totally normal Supreme Court Justice kind of stuff.
And if you watched the show yesterday, you may be thinking, “Hey didn’t we just hear something super weird and concerning about Justice Alito?” The answer is “yes,” yes you did. That’s because The New York Times just reported on an upside down flag that was hung outside his home following January 6th. At a time when that symbol was being used in support of Donald Trump and the big lie.
Now, he has blamed all of that on his wife and a feud she was having with the neighbors. Just Mrs. Alito just roguely putting a symbol of the insurrectionists up on the home that he literally must have walked by every single day. Yeah that’s how he describes it.
Now, don't forget that Justice Alito also took a luxury fishing trip with a GOP billionaire who had cases before the Supreme Court. His excuse for that one was that the seat on the private plane “would have otherwise been vacant.” Of course, that is what you get on any plane.
So, yes, there is a lot of smoke surrounding this one Justice. And amid this avalanche of reporting about just how online and political and cozy with billionaires Justice Samuel Alito is, I keep going back to an interview he gave with The Wall Street Journal in 2022 where he said this “Everyone is free to express disagreements with our decisions and to criticize our reasoning” – okay – “But saying or implying that the court is becoming an illegitimate institution or questioning our integrity crosses an important line.”
(…)
