Beshear apologizes to Diet Mountain Dew after knocking Vance’s ‘weird’ joke

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) apologized to Diet Mountain Dew at a press conference Thursday after criticizing Republican vice presidential candidate and Ohio Sen. JD Vance (R) for “weird” comments involving the drink.

“Folks, I’ve been a person that when sometimes I’ve gone over the line, I’ve wanted to make sure that I set the record straight, so, I do owe an apology to Diet Mountain Dew,” Beshear said at the press conference.

Beshear’s apology comes after he went after Vance for comments he made about Diet Mountain Dew at a Monday rally in Ohio. The Kentucky Governor has recently been among a few names being floated as possible vice presidential picks for Vice President Harris, and he has been targeting Vance over his connections to the Appalachian region.

When talking about voter identification at the rally, Vance said Democrats “say it’s racist to do anything.”

“I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday, and one today, I’m sure they’re gonna call that racist too but — it’s good,” Vance said.

In response to Vance’s comments, Beshear said they were “weird” in an interview on CNN Monday and questioned, “Who drinks Diet Mountain Dew?”

At his press conference Thursday, Beshear said he doesn’t “believe that government should be making your decisions.”

“So if you enjoy Diet Mountain Dew, you be you, we wanna support you,” Beshear continued. “And, to Diet Mountain Dew, very sorry, didn’t mean to say negative things about you.”

According to a frequently asked questions page about Mountain Dew, the drink “was invented in the 1940s by Tennessee beverage bottlers Barney and Ally Hartman and was first marketed in Marion, Virginia; Knoxville, Tennessee and Johnson City, Tennessee.” A significant portion of Tennessee and Virginia are considered to be a part of Appalachia, alongside Beshear’s home state of Kentucky.

In an emailed statement to The Hill, a spokesperson for the Vance campaign said that the Kentucky governor “is an out of touch elitist who grew up with a silver spoon.” 

“His wealthy lawyer/politician daddy, secured him his first job out of law school at the law firm he was partners at, and then went on to basically gift his son his political career,” Taylor Van Kirk continued. “Beshear will never relate to working-people in the heartland because he had everything handed to him and never had to struggle.”

The Hill has reached out to PepsiCo.

— Updated at 5:19 p.m.