Click here to read the full article.
Dylan Mulvaney has hit back at U.S. President Donald Trump after he mocked the trans advocate, actress and singer in his White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech on Friday.
“My name is Dylan Mulvaney and the president
said my name four times in his speech on Friday night,” she began a TikTok video response posted on Sunday evening.
At Friday’s rescheduled dinner, which had been postponed after a gunman opened fire at the original event in April, Trump mentioned Mulvaney after CNN’s Kaitlan Collins accepted an award for her covering the White House. Trump compared the two women and brought up the 2023 Bud Light controversy, where customers boycotted the beer brand after Mulvaney posted a social media ad featuring her face on a can.
“I thought Kaitlan had really made it big with a major new sponsorship, but then I informed her that it wasn’t her on the Bud Light can, it was Dylan Mulvaney,” Trump said in his speech. “Dylan Mulvaney cost Bud Light $35 billion in market cap. That was the worst commercial ever made by the way, for those few people who want to hear that. Most people don’t care, but I would. I wouldn’t want to hire Dylan any time soon.”
In her response, Mulvaney — who most recently starred in the Broadway musical “Six” — first congratulated Collins, saying: “I’m incredibly honored to be compared to her in any way and I hope that she continues doing all the great work.” She then marveled at the fact that she’s “been kind of flying under the radar” since the Bud Light video, but is “still his topic of conversation all these years later.”
“It seems to me that I might be the one that got away for these men, like I am permanently burned into their retinas, I am microchipped into their minds,” Mulvaney said, adding that perhaps “being publicly mocked and criticized by this administration is actually, like, the greatest compliment of all because it puts me in the company of some of the most brilliant, empathetic people in our world today.”
Since his speech on Friday night, Trump has doubled down on his comments about Collins and Mulvaney, posting an AI-generated photo from the beer ad placing Collins’ face on Mulvaney’s body.
“But I do still wonder, why is it so important to them that I don’t find success? What is it that I have that they don’t?” Mulvaney asked. “Oh my God… freedom! I am free in a way that they will never have the privilege to experience, and they want to use their power to take away my freedom. But what they don’t understand is my freedom has zero contingency on what they can provide for me, because my freedom is fully dependent on the moment that I acknowledged my real, authentic self, and every day since. And sharing that with the world, it’s just icing on the cake. But they don’t want me to be able to share that, because it would mean young people realizing that if someone like me can be themselves and find success and freedom, then they can find success and freedom for themselves, too.”
Mulvaney then gave her viewers some “action items,” emphasizing that it is more important than ever to support trans and nonbinary people, especially young people seeking acceptance.
“When they try to judge you for your support of us, take that as the greatest compliment,” she said. “Ladies, when they tell you that you look like a trans woman, wear it like a medal. Men, when they tell you that being attracted to trans women makes you gay, I want you to Hilary Duff PSA their ass so hard that they don’t even know what just happened. And to the dolls, let’s have each other’s back.”
She concluded her video response with a message directly to Trump, saying: “To the president, thank you for reminding me that I am more powerful than I even knew. And to quote my favorite recording artist Shea Diamond: I am America.”
Watch Mulvaney’s full video below.
