It took Frito-Lay 63 years to build a $13 billion dollar empire. This week, 50 seconds almost destroyed it. That’s how close the brand came to corporate annihilation after its Doritos team posted a short video with a trans influencer that makes Dylan Mulvaney look like a youth pastor. Turns out, 24-year-old Samantha Hudson isn’t just a man pretending to be a woman, he’s a sick pervert with dreams of sexually abusing children. Congratulations, Bud Light. You’re officially out of the brand basement.
To everyone’s shock, Hudson, who appeared on “Crunch Talk” on behalf of Doritos Spain, has a disgusting history of social media tweets that fantasize about everything from nymphomania to child sexual abuse. “I want to do thuggish things to get into a 12-year-old girl’s [expletive],” he wrote. In another post, he talks about being in the middle of a street in his underwear “in front of a super beautiful 8-year-old girl.” With surprising cruelty, he vilifies victims of abuse, writing, “I hate women who are victims of sexual assault and go to self help centers to overcome their trauma. Annoying sl---s.”
As if that weren’t enough, Hudson describes himself as a Marxist “anti-capitalist,” who fights for “the abolition of … the traditional monogamous nuclear family” — which apparently makes him perfect spokesperson material.
Of course, once people started digging up his vile statements, Hudson apologized, claiming they were “pure provocation and in very bad taste.” “… [H]onestly I don’t know what to say,” he said. “I don’t remember having written such barbarities. … I thought that ‘dark humor’ was funny.” But it was too late. Americans across every platform were horrified, outraged, and to Frito-Lay’s terror, motivated. From journalists to former Trump officials, people called for “the Bud Light treatment.” Who hires an admitted pedophile to be the face of their product, everyone wondered? And what lazy marketing team doesn’t do a background check?
“This person is a million times worse than Dylan Mulvaney,” Ian Miles Cheong argued. The country seemed to agree — making #BoycottDoritos trend on X within hours of the story breaking.
Then something incredible happened. Before the wave of consumer anger hit land, Frito-Lay didn’t just take the video down — they fired Hudson. “We have ended the relationship,” a spokesperson told Rolling Stone. “We strongly condemn words or actions that promote violence or sexism of any kind.”
It was an astonishing turn for the company, even more astonishing given the timetable. Less than 48 hours after the video went viral, Frito-Lay — whose parent company PepsiCo has a perfect 100% score from the Human Rights Campaign on trans advocacy — dropped Hudson like a hot potato. Even Rip Curl, who faced the world’s wrath last month for featuring a trans “hero” in its surfer series, took five days to apologize — a record for regret.
That’s how dangerous it’s become for brands to cross consumers with a woke agenda. In the 11 months since Mulvaney-gate at Bud Light — a gamble that’s now cost them an eye-popping $1.4 billion in revenue — the entire landscape of corporate activism has changed. CEOs who were tripping over themselves to embrace the LGBT fringe are desperate to avoid the pushback that broke Anheuser-Busch, Target, Disney, and others.
As Family Research Council’s Joseph Backholm pointed out to The Washington Stand, this situation is different than other endorsement deals “involving so-called trans influencers,” since Hudson has quite a different, depraved past. “But it’s good to see that gender identity is no longer providing immunity to do and say terrible things,” he observed. “Wokeness has long insisted those labeled ‘oppressed’ can get away with doing things other people should not do. We need a world where people are judged consistently by their choices more than the group they identify with. Yes, Frito-Lay is probably doing a financial calculation here as well, but this is still a refreshing act of moral sanity.”
For corporate America, it’s quite a sea change. After years of punching above their weight class, Big Business faces a terrifying reality: consumers are punching back. And victories like this one will only inspire them to flex those muscles more.
Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.
