A man holding a sign

ISU Fan & Busch Light Guy, Carson King, Raises Grand Total Of $2.95 Million For Iowa Children’s Hospital

What an absolute whirlwind this story has been, but when it’s all said and done, it’s one that will ultimately have a happy ending.

By now, you’ve undoubtedly heard of Carson King, and even if the name doesn’t ring a bell, you’re familiar with what he’s done and the controversy that surrounded him.

Let’s start from the beginning…

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Carson King, a recent Iowa State graduate, showed up to College GameDay in Ames, Iowa, with a sign requesting donations to replenish his Busch Light supply, the unofficial state beverage of Iowa. When the sign with his Venmo info got a few seconds of airtime, donations began pouring in. King tweeted out that he would be donating all the money to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital in Iowa City, save for one case of Busch Light, and that’s when the donations EXPLODED.

Busch Light agreed to match whatever he could raise by the end of the month, Venmo agreed to do the same. Hundreds of thousands of dollars started pouring in and King was dubbed an “Iowa Legend” and given a year-supply of Busch Light with his own face on the custom cans. Countless TV interviews, newspaper interviews, he was a state and national hero, who single-handedly managed to raise over a million dollars for children fighting cancer.

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But then, things took a turn for the worse….

Not content with a heartwarming story about a kid from Iowa helping children fight cancer, Aaron P. Calvin and the Des Moines Register conducted and intense and highly unnecessary social background check on King, digging all the way back into his high school tweets. And, they found exactly what they were hoping to find… a way to ruin him.

Filled with remorse, King apologized for two racist tweets he shared, quoting Tosh.0, when he was 16-years old. He manned up, took the blame, and accepted the responsibility. However, Anheuser-Busch immediately cut ties with King, still maintaining that they would honor their agreement and match the donations. And then, in a shocking twist, Calvin’s own tweets surfaced from a few years back, even more incendiary than Kings. He was a hypocrite, a first-ballot, hall of fame, raging hypocrite.

Iowans were outraged, Americans were outraged, even other journalists were outraged. King’s legacy was forever tarnished, Calvin was eventually fired, and the heartwarming story that the entire country was rooting for, became just another infuriating reflection of the times we’re living in.

At the conclusion of a fundraising concert last night, King posted this “thank you” letter to his Twitter, thanking everybody that participated in the campaign, and encouraging the children and the families that a battling life-threatening illnesses at Stead Family Children’s Hospital.

And all of that being said, here we are today on October 1st, the donations have concluded, and Carson King has managed to raise a grand total of $2.95 million dollars for the Iowa Children’s Hospital. King announced the total on the Murph and Andy Show this afternoon.

$2.95 million dollars, all because one humble kid from Iowa held up a sign at a college football game. Absolutely incredible.

The University of Iowa’s Stead Family Children’s Hospital released this heart-warming video thanking King, and everybody that donating, for their generosity and kindness.

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