Trump’s Dylan Mulvaney Joke at the Press Dinner — Let’s Talk About It

Hey y’all, tt’s just me, Peppermint this week on Queer 101 while Hugh is on his book tour (My Bad go get it!) — and we have a lot to unpack.

In this solo episode, I break down what happened at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, why the event matters for a free press, and why politics, media, and comedy don’t always mix gracefully.

We’re talking about Donald Trump’s July 24, 2026 remarks, including:

• His ongoing feud with journalists
• Comments aimed at CNN’s Kaitlan Collins
• A Bud Light joke referencing Dylan Mulvaney
• How trans people continue to be used as political punchlines

I also revisit the Bud Light backlash, Trump’s claims about financial losses, and what it says about the broader climate for trans and nonbinary communities.

Beyond the headlines, I spotlight key 2026 midterm races, including:

• Abdul El‑Sayed vs. Haley Stevens in Michigan
• Omar Fattah in Minnesota

Plus, I share Dylan Mulvaney’s response calling for support of trans youth and nonbinary people — and why staying engaged matters, even when politics feels like one big distraction cycle.

If you care about:

• Trans rights and LGBTQ+ advocacy
• Media freedom and political messaging
• The 2026 midterm elections
• How pop culture and politics collide

This one’s for you.

Follow us at:

• @peppermint247
• @hughoryan
• @pridehousemedia

Write to us at:

• questions@queer101podcast.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey y'all, welcome to Queer 101.

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I'm Peppermint and I'm Do the Historian. And we're here to bring you all things queer history that you didn't learn in school.

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This is a podcast where we dive deep into queer culture, books, and the queer experience, past, present, and future. From the history that shaped us to the culture that keeps us thriving, we have got it all covered.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Grab a seat and let's shine a light on queer history because these stories demand to be heard and must be celebrated.

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Welcome to Queer 101. Class is now in time. Hey y'all, it's me, Peppermint. Welcome back to Queer 101, the podcast where we talk art, culture, literature, yes, people, and politics. Oh my gosh. I'm Peppermint, and Hugh, our co-host, is still on his book tour. So I'm doing another solo episode, but we miss him so much. Make sure you check out his brand new book, My Bad, which is, oh, it's over there. I don't have it in my hands, but it's fantastic. You gotta check it out. Um, anyway, I'm here all by my lonesome, but I'm gonna try to keep it positive. At least I'm gonna try, okay? But it's definitely not easy in the current political insert word that we have going on. Uh, and a lot of times it it feels like an endless barrage, like daily, deluge of conflama. That's an old school word that we used to use for drama and conflammoration. I don't know. Um the conflama uh that comes out of the White House of all types of things in politics and the the the government sticking its nose where it doesn't belong and making rules and statements and thing, you know, declarations that nobody asked for, especially about trans people. And so that's no that's certainly can't be a surprise uh about the attacks on the trans community coming from the White House. And last week the makeup sort of White House correspondence dinner, if you remember, the last one was a hit. There was um an alleged attempt on the president's life, but there was someone who they caught uh on video and also obviously in person, uh the White House Correspondence Dinner being an annual dinner that the uh the press corps, who are the journalists that cover the White House and American politics, uh, they hold every year and they invite, you know, it's a DC event, so they invite everyone, including the the president. Um it's not really an award show for the president. It's not supposed to be like something that uplifts the president. It's the White House and the White House in terms like in the in the terms of the White House being the people's house. Uh Correspondence Dinner, where the um the uh the industry of journalism who covers political journalism will get together and they it's uh you know kind of a roast, a bit of a roast, and the president does get roasted because you know it's it's done under the guise of a free and fair press that is supposed to be able to, in a democracy and in a free country, uh not only um interrogate, uh, you know, hold the president accountable, but it's supposed to be the sort of the unofficial fourth branch of government. You know, there's the judicial, there's the executive, obviously, there's the legislative, which is Congress, and then there's supposed to be the journalistic, free and fair press. That is the free press is supposed to be able to um have access uh to, you know, um pretty much anything that the people deserve to have access to, uh, including the president being able to follow along in the president, ride on the president's plane, um, and also criticize the president, hold them accountable, ask questions, gain access to important information, uh, the Pentagon, all these different things. And so the a free and fair press is supposed to have unfettered access and also be able to exercise freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which means that they can criticize, ask questions of, or even make fun of our world leaders, or our country's leaders, the president, without any um repercussions, without any punishments. But we know that that's not true right now uh in in many ways in our country, where the president has ejected people out of blocked and banned people, uh, the associated press being one of them from having access to the uh the White House Press Corps, which is the group of journalists that travel with the president to all of his world events. They go on Air Force One. Those are all the people asking questions. So that's the the sort of scrum that you see in front of the White House when the president leaves the White House on the way to some type of a trip or going somewhere. He always stops and answers questions. Whenever he's getting on and off a plane, he always stops and answers questions. That's the White House press corps. And for years it's been a tradition that the president, the current sitting president, will be present at that event, be made fun of, also um take a few shots by at the hands of the press, take shots at the press, you know, all in good fun, I guess. And then they give out awards for journalism, you know, like people going into like wartime journalism, people who've risked their lives or maybe even lost their lives, posthumously being honored. And so that's always been a tradition until Donald Trump, because he has such a contentious relationship with the press. He demonizes the press and says that the media is, you know, this, that, and the other, which in many ways they are. They're certainly complicit in what's going on now. Um, but he has always taken aim at them in in an obvious attempt to sort of scale back the access that they have. And so that really became a a reality during his first presidency when he vowed off of the White House uh correspondence dinner. Um, and this year was the first time he'd ever he'd done it. Uh and they say it has a lot to do with that big moment um back in, I don't remember what year it was, where uh President Obama um was roasting President Trump or then Donald Trump um and said some you know w wild things. It wasn't really, I mean it was personal, but it was making fun of him, of course, at his expense, jokes jokes at his expense, and apparently he just never got over that. He was always um apparently he's still very sore, has a huge bone to pick, and wants to get revenge on President Obama, but also the the media who he says demonize him unfairly. And so he has never participated in the White House Correspondence Dinner until earlier this year when he did. And there was a unusual, a very suspicious incident of a person coming with a gun, basically charging the room, charging the the building, then into the area, and then eventually into the room. And people, you know, um, it sort of turned into mayhem. I don't think anyone got harmed, like shot. Um, they arrested him, and then we haven't heard from him since. There's no trial. This always happens with the attempts on President Trump's life. There's like the thing, and then he said, see, this is why we need to have a ballroom, why we need to hold the next one in the ballroom, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's always a reason to make a huge change to the way that we've always done things when these almost frequent uh attempts on the president's life. And so we haven't heard anything, but they decided to have another one because it got stopped very early on the attempt, the appearance, the show happened very early on. And so they decided to hold it again so that these journalists could s receive their accolades that they were supposed to be awarded. Um, and so here we are at this week's uh correspondence dinner. And, you know, I'm sure that President Trump will always find a way to make it all about himself. Uh and surprise, surprise, he always turns it into such a thing. Um, anyway, uh they held the dinner last Friday, and Donald Trump tried to be funny and clever and smart. Quite an accomplishment if he's able to achieve any of those things. But why are we even bringing this up? Because, you know, they could leave well enough alone. He had to continue uh with his hate speech against trans people, of course, using the opportunity to not highlight the wonderful work and efforts of the journalists who keep this, uh who are supposed to, the corporate, very corporate, pr bought and sold journalists who are supposed to keep um, you know, uh the president's office honest and transparent. Um but anyway, uh he decided to poke fun at Caitlin Collins. He's constantly really dogging on w female journalists, women who are journalists. He does he doesn't respect them. He's always talking about how they look, whether they're pretty or not, why they are um, you know, why aren't they smiling, the look on their face, all these different things. Um, and so he never um he all he never has really many nice things to say about these ladies. And if he does say anything nice about a female, if he does say something nice about a female journalist, then it's usually about how s how nice they treat him and how pretty they are. Like that's usually what it is. He's constantly dogging on female journalists, that's the point. And so at the White House correspondence dinner um this year on July 24, 2026, he made two remarks uh referencing Dilla Mulvaney um complaining about Caitlin Collins. Um basically, according to the Washington Post, because I didn't really watch this, he basically said that, you know, in his monologue addressing um Caitlin Collins, who used to be very uh conservative and quite still, uh, he was addressing Caitlin Collins, sort of like contextualizing her career and talking about the highlights and maybe even the low moments of her career, but decided to put a jab at her and say he had once basically mixed her up with Dilla Mulvaney because he thought that she uh he mistook her for the for Dilla Mulvaney on the cover of a Bud Light can, remarking on how Caitlin Collins has also had a career uh highlight in modeling for beer cans. And the joke is that she wasn't on a beer can, that was Dilla Mulvaney. Oh, you mistook Caitlin Collins for Dilla Mulvaney. Oh, you know, so she's not as attractive as pre President Trump will constantly turn around and talk talk about how she looks like she's apparently an attractive young woman. Listen, the president will never fail or never pass up a moment to attack the trans community, even when it's not really that advantageous for him to do. I don't really know how what type of political capital or even social capital this bought him. I don't know if anybody was walking out of there saying, wow, I didn't think President Trump was that funny. Like nobody ran out of there saying that. If anything, it seemed like he left all of his supporters scratching their heads. And so it is a shame that our president decides to throw US citizens who are, or just human beings, under the bus by making fun of them, making fun of their appearance, remarking on their appearance and things like things like that. But we've seen how he treats journalists. He, you know, was remarking on another journalist who might have had um who might have been disabled in some way or had uh condition, maybe a palsy, I don't remember, when he was, you know, talking about this journalist and sort of mocking their physical attributes, which had nothing to do with their skill as a journalist. And so this is the same old, same old stuff from this tired president. Um, but it is a shame to see him throw somebody like Dylan Mulvaney under the bus, someone who has had so much attention uh brought on her, of course, in light of the Bud Light debacle, some people might call it a scandal, where Dylan Mulvaney was hired uh uh as a sort of spokesperson, basically an influencer to hawk Bud Light on her channel of 10 million or more. That Bud Light obviously made the decision. They wanted to clearly hire Dylan Mulvaney to to promote the beer, and they I they must have sent a few sample test cans of the beer with her face on it. Of course, it didn't mean that they overhauled the entire company and and every like you know worldwide release of her face on every can in America. Um, but her face was on a couple of cans that she put on her desk and then was talking. And this was a huge backlash. I'm sure that you heard about it. Um anyway, so Dilla Mulvaney, you know, he says that Dilla Mulvaney cost Bud Light $35 billion in a market cap, you know. And I just I'm thinking about this. This is wild that in this moment at an event that's supposed to be highlighting the work of journalists who sometimes risk their lives and many of whom go to painstaking efforts to investigate and you know, do all the things that journalism would traditionally call for. And the president in in their sort of presence is deciding to attack one of them and then throw a trans person under the bus along with Bud Light. Now, I don't drink beer and I don't really care. But the fact that this president of the United States, who's anti-socialist, anti-communist, apparently pro obviously pro-capitalist, is going to attack an all-American beer brand, making sure that they lose even more money. Isn't that something? Yeah. I don't know how great he thinks he's making America by dragging not only Americans, but American businesses, raking them across the coals. And so I just think that is kind of tired. But I'm also not shocked because that's our president. Yeah. I don't really have too much more to say on that. I really do think that if you are in Michigan right now, or if you're in Minnesota, um, please keep your eyes peeled for some of the progressive candidates that are running. This week is to next week. Well, this basically this month is um the start, the the lead-in to the midterms. A lot uh there are a lot of congressional and senate races that are happening. Race! Um uh I have my eyes on Michigan, the state of Michigan. Uh Abdul Al-Sayed uh is going up against uh Haley Stevens, who is a corporate darling. Uh, and they've had a couple of debates. That uh I think the eighth is their primary ahead of the general in November for the midterms. And then uh in Minnesota, um Omar Fatah, you should check him out. He's kind of an up-and-comer, and he lost his seat, uh, but he is such he seems like a great candidate. These are all people who are not necessarily socialists, but are 100% running on at least three things, which is money out of politics, Medicare for all, and just making things more affordable across the board, like ending Citizens United and ending um uh stock buybacks, and you know, there's a few others, but those two pieces are super major. So um, you know, think about your life and then think about how much better it would be if you had more money in your pocket and it wasn't being sent overseas for genocide. And then listen to the politician that is saying that they want to actually do those things specifically and are not taking money from corporations. Um, yeah, that's that. Anyway, uh Dilla Mulvaney had a really, really good response, and I just, you know, really admire her response. I cannot even imagine what it would be like to be called out by the president and sort of um attacked by the president and you know brought into the attention and the sort of crosshairs of his supporters, but Dylan handled it with grace. He did post out, he doubled down this week after receiving some criticism from I don't know who was shocked. Um, but he did double down this week. And then he, you know, posted this picture of Dylan Mulvaney's head on Caitlin Collins' body, which is so bizarre. Why do you need to do that? They're probably about the same size. You know, that's my thought. I don't know, it doesn't really matter. Um, but then Dilla Mulvaney had the opportunity to have her response. And here's a clip of her response. This is what she said.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

Hi, is this a good time? Well, it's definitely an interesting time because my name is Dilla Mulvaney, and the president of the United States said my name in his speech four times on Friday night. I couldn't respond right away because yesterday I had tickets to see Meg Stalter and O'Mary. But now I think I'd like to say a little something. Firstly, I would like to congratulate CNN's Caitlin Collins on her award and tell her that I'm incredibly honored to be compared to her in any way, and I hope that she keeps doing all the great work. Now, the president also brought up a video I did over three years ago, and mind you, I've been kind of flying under the radar, keeping up a pretty low profile, just like doing my little musicals, singing, dancing, and yet I am still his topic of conversation all these years later. And it seems to me that I might be like the one that got away for these men. Like I am permanently burned into their retinas, I am microchipped into their minds. And when I first heard that the president put me on his diss track, I was like, well, that's not good. Then a few weeks ago, I would have probably been more upset about this. But luckily, I was ghosted last month by a hookup who I really liked. And what I realized from that experience was that I shouldn't want to be with someone who doesn't really want to be with me. So maybe I shouldn't want to be professionally supported by an administration that doesn't personally support me or so many others in this country. Food for thought. In fact, maybe 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 like the most brilliant, empathetic people in our world today. But I do still wonder like, why is it so important to them that I don't find success? Like, what is it that I have that they don't? 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 that my freedom has like 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 in 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. So now I have some action items for us. Are you ready? Number one, support trans and non-binary people. This is the time. I am sounding the alarm. We need you to stand up for us, vote for us, donate to our causes, hire us, and support the businesses who hire us, but most importantly, love us. That is what we need more than anything right now, publicly and proudly. Number two, if a young person is seeking acceptance, we are going to love them. And if you are a young person watching this, I need you to hold on to every piece of yourself tightly, because especially the parts that they are trying to make you feel guilty about or trying to scare you into abandoning. And I need you to find people who will help you carry those pieces into a kinder day. Okay? Okay. And number three, when they try to judge you for your support of us, take that as the greatest compliment. 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 Hillary 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. Facts and lastly to the president. Thank you for reminding me that I am more powerful than I even knew. And to quote my favorite recording artist, Shia Diamond, I am America.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Love ya. Class Act. That is a class act. That is how you respond when the president of the United States is attacking you. And you're not even an elected official. Anyway. Surprise, surprise. The president will stay up all night posting, uh, trolling, all of that jazz. Um oh, it's actually Caitlin Collins' face onto Dylan Mulvaney's body, forgive me. Anyway, um, yeah. Our president. I think the entire thing is a f fluffy distraction from the fact that they still haven't released some damn Epstein files. And there was apparently some new drop that came out last week um with new information, and somebody who was hired to handle something with the Epstein files was then found murdered. Uh, it's just an investigator, I think. And so, yes, we do need an escape from politics, but we can't really fully escape it. So just stay engaged because when you're following the bouncing ball that they want you to choose, whoever that they is, when you're following the president's bouncing ball and paying attention to something he's saying, we need to be looking in the exact opposite direction, you know, because he is big on wanting to distract. And that's his jazz. Um, anyway, uh, that's what is up today. That's what's happening today. Uh, I just wanted to come through and pull that through for you. Just thought that we would mention the trans community. Make sure that you are um, you know, being supportive and taking care of yourself and each other out there because it is wild out there in these political streets, darling. Uh, and I wanted to um sort of acknowledge this, the ongoing situation with this administration. Uh and remember that we are still here every other week until September, then we're back on our regular weekly schedule. Uh, on behalf of Hugh, uh I am Peppermint. Make sure that you click like and subscribe. And thank you so much for listening or watching. And we will see you on the flip side right here next week. Bye. Thank you so much for joining us today.

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This podcast is part of Pride House Media, hosted by us, Peppermint and Hugh, produced and edited by Josh Rosenzweig with original music composed by Nell Balavan.

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You can stay connected and join the conversation by following us at Peppermint 247 or write to us at questions at queer101podcast.com.

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Thank you for listening, and remember, our history is your history. Stay proud, stay curious, and we'll see you next time on Queer 101.