After commenting on her expressions, Trump attempted to deliver a roast-style joke that was met with silence from the crowd, comparing her to trans actress Dylan Mulvaney in a three-year-old ad campaign.

“I thought Kaitlan had really made it big with a major new sponsorship,” he said, “but then I informed her that it wasn’t her on the Bud Light can, it was Dylan Mulvaney.”

Mulvaney, now 29, briefly collaborated with Bud Light in 2023, posting a short video to her social media during March Madness that featured cans of the light beer. The innocuous brand partnership was quickly amplified by far-right figures, and Trump ally Kid Rock helped lead a boycott of Bud Light and its parent company, Anheuser-Busch, for working with a trans person at a time when Republican politicians had been making anti-trans attacks a major part of the party’s platform.

Backlash from conservatives over Bud Light’s perceived “wokeness” led to a significant decline in sales for the beer brand, which is still recovering from the financial fallout years later. As of early 2024, Anheuser-Busch had lost $27 billion in market value.