The owner of “America’s Oldest Brewery” is in hot water for throwing his support behind Donald Trump on a whim.
Richard Yuengling Jr., the owner of the Pennsylvania-based Yuengling & Son beer company, announced his support for Trump to please one of the GOP nominee’s sons, who took a tour of the Pottsville brewery Monday.
“Our guys are behind your father. We need him in here,” Yuengling, 73, told Eric Trump during a press conference after the Trump son said his rich daddy is going to “make it a lot easier for business to function.”
Yuengling’s sweeping Trump praise had a lot of Pennsylvanians choking on their brews, and campaigns to boycott the 187-year-old brewery were quickly underway.
Pennsylvania’s first openly gay legislator, Brian Sims, penned a scathing Facebook post Wednesday, announcing that he will no longer pour Yuengling in his pints after 17 loyal years of drinking. Sims tagged a laundry list of gay bars in the post and urged them to refrain from serving the traditional lager at their establishments.
“One of the most prevalent brands in (Philadelphia’s) Gayborhood and in LGBT bars across the Commonwealth is using our own dollars to back a person and an ideology that says that our lives and our loves matter less,” said Sims, a Democrat representing Philadelphia’s 182nd District. “More to the point, those dollars are being used RIGHT NOW to give power to his bigoted messages attacking our black and brown neighbors and all of the women in our lives.”
Sims’ call sent ripples across the state, with the owner of JR’s in Philly, David Perruzza, posting a Facebook video in which he removed the Yuengling handle from the gay bar’s row of taps.
“From this point on, because Trump has Pence and Pence is one of the biggest idiots ever and very anti-gay, I am doing this,” Perruzza said in the video before removing the tap. “When people support things that don’t support us, then we don’t support them. So goodbye Yuengling, you are the weakest link.”
Several bars in Washington, D.C., also announced they were throwing out their Yuengling kegs for good following the fifth-generation owner’s Trump endorsement.
Gypsy Sally’s, a music venue and bar near the D.C. waterfront, put its own spin on the boycott by announcing it will continue to serve the brew until the kegs run dry — and then donate all proceeds from Yuengling pours directly to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Some people joined in on the beer boycott because of Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, which has been repeatedly blasted as racist and xenophobic.
“Regularly drive 90 mile from KY to OH to get @Yuengling_Beer but supporting racist, misogynist nut-job Trump is the end of the line for me,” one previously loyal Yuengling drinker in Kentucky said on Twitter.
“Welp, I enjoyed your beer but I have a policy against supporting companies that support racist, misogynist assholes,” another Twitter user chimed in.
Yuengling’s Trump endorsement might not come as that big of a surprise to some, as the beer baron has previously shown contempt for Obama, labor unions and paying taxes — something Trump himself frequently launches diatribes against.
The Teamsters union, which represents over 1.3 million blue-collar workers across the country, called on a national boycott of Yuengling products in 2014 after the now Trump-touting owner publicly stated that Pennsylvania should implement anti-union laws because businesses “shy away when they come into this state” and have to pay their workers union-mandated wages.
