The Unpresidential Vulgarity of ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ (NeverTrumper whinefest)

The Bulwark ^ | August 5, 2022 | BILL LUEDERS

[DoodleBob]

My friend Donald Trump emailed me the other day with what he called “an exciting announcement”:

“I designed a BRAND NEW HAT, and I want YOU to see it first.”

The hat that the former president personally designed and is now offering exclusively to ME delivers a crisp three-word message: “Let’s Go Brandon!” It is, the email subject line announced, “Guaranteed to trigger the Libs.” And it can be all mine if, within the next hour, I donate $45 or more to his Save America joint fundraising committee.

Initially, I believed this calculatedly offensive hat was new to Trump’s merch collection because I had not seen it offered before. But a search of an email folder called “Trash,” to which I have various items automatically directed, revealed that he has previously offered me the same item several times since early July, and perhaps sooner, but these messages had been whisked away before I came across them.

Trump, who typically addresses me as “Friend,” has also offered me a chance to obtain a “Let’s Go Brandon” flag for the same low price of $45, or about ten times what either item likely costs to produce. Alas, his merch website does not currently seem to stock “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirts, previously available.

The pitches for the hat—which I am increasingly skeptical is being offered just to me—all use the same language: “Biden is an absolute DISASTER and is ruining our country. Make sure everyone knows where you stand by proudly wearing this hat.”

---

According to an authoritative article last October from the Associated Press, the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” came into being as code for “F*** Joe Biden” after a NASCAR race in Alabama on Oct. 2. As an NBC Sports reporter was interviewing race winner Brandon Brown, the crowd began a chant that was difficult to make out. The reporter thought they were chanting “Let’s go Brandon!” when it actually was “F*** Joe Biden.”

The AP notes that “NASCAR and NBC have since taken steps to limit ‘ambient crowd noise’ during interviews, but it was too late—the phrase already had taken off.” The article continues:

America’s presidents have endured meanness for centuries; Grover Cleveland faced chants of “Ma, Ma Where’s my Pa?” in the 1880s over rumors he’d fathered an illegitimate child. Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson were the subject of poems that leaned into racist tropes and allegations of bigamy.

“We have a sense of the dignity of the office of president that has consistently been violated to our horror over the course of American history,” said Cal Jillson, a politics expert and professor in the political science department at Southern Methodist University. “We never fail to be horrified by some new outrage.”

But wait: The harsh heckling and ribbing that Cleveland, Jefferson, Jackson, and other U.S. presidents endured did not come directly from their political rivals. John Adams, who beat out Jefferson for the presidency in 1796 and then lost to him in 1800, did not lead crowds in chanting vulgarities targeting his opponent.

Jackson’s opponents nicknamed him “jackass,” but, according to the Smithsonian, “He liked the name so much that he used a symbol of a donkey in his campaign for a short time.” It would later become the symbol of the Democratic party. John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, who ran against Jackson in 1824, 1828, and 1832, did not sell their supporters hats making references to sexual intercourse.

Similarly, neither of Democrat Grover Cleveland’s two Republican opponents for president, James G. Blaine in 1884 and Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and 1892, went around hawking merch that said “F*** Grover.” In fact, according to historian Henry F. Graff’s thumbnail sketch of the 1888 campaign, which Cleveland lost to Harrison, both candidates ran issue-focused campaigns with “dignity and understatement.”

Can anyone imagine Donald Trump doing anything to merit the use of either of those terms?

---

As with most things having to do with Trump, the Republican political establishment is fully complicit with his demeaning of the presidency through boorish conduct. Again, to quote the October article by the AP:

Republican Rep. Bill Posey of Florida ended an Oct. 21 House floor speech with a fist pump and the phrase “Let’s go, Brandon!” . . . South Carolina Republican Jeff Duncan wore a “Let’s Go Brandon” face mask at the Capitol last week. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz posed with a “Let’s Go Brandon” sign at the World Series. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s press secretary retweeted a photo of the phrase on a construction sign in Virginia.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post had to issue a correction when it reported, due to an editing error, that a crowd drawn to a speech by Donald Trump Jr. in Georgia last September began chanting “Let’s Go Brandon.” The crowd chant was actually “F*** Joe Biden.”

Indeed, during a talk at Mar-a-Lago in November, Trump Sr. responded to chants of “Let’s Go Brandon!” by joking, “I still like the first phrase better, somehow more accurate.”

Curiously, the only person who seems to have paid a price for taking part in this denigration of norms is Brandon Brown, the NASCAR driver. His decision to partner with “LGBcoin,” a worthless cryptocurrency originally created to capitalize on the slogan, prompted a backlash that he now blames for the sponsorship difficulties that have forced him to give up his berth in several races.

“I’m still viewed as a political figure,” Brown told the racing publication Frontstretch. “I can be viewed as divisive because of the chant. It’s really hard to convince companies that, ‘Hey, that’s not me. That’s just what the crowd was chanting.’ It does make it hard.”

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Last Sunday, July 31, at a LIV Golf tournament in New Jersey, Trump, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, and Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene can be seen fist-pumping and laughing as the crowd breaks into a chant of “Let’s go Brandon.” The tournament was protested by relatives of victims of the 9/11 terror attacks because of the alleged involvement of tournament sponsor Saudi Arabia in the attacks.

The Republican delusion that portrays Joe Biden as a doddering and sinister figure led to an embarrassing tirade unleashed by GOP Rep. Troy E. Nehls of Texas on Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, insisting that he do something about the president’s mental health. “Sadly, he shakes hands with ghosts and imaginary people, and he falls off bicycles,” Nehls exclaimed. “Have you spoken to Cabinet members about implementing the Twenty-fifth Amendment on President Biden?”

Actually it was Trump who stirred talk among Cabinet members on the need to invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment, following the insurrection that he led on January 6th.

Biden is the oldest president in our nation’s history, a childhood stutterer, given to occasional gaffes. But he has never been anywhere near as bumbling and inarticulate as Donald (“I have the best words”) Trump. The notion that Biden is unfit and Trump wasn’t rivals “Stop the Steal” as the GOP’s biggest lie.

Yet this is the level that the presidency of Donald Trump has taken us to: schoolyard taunts and the dehumanization of political opponents, open contempt for common decency as well as for the institutions of democracy, the wholesale injection of toxins into the body politic.

Put that on a hat and wear it.

[enumerated]

“Know what the enemy is thinking.”

Name one thing you learned about what the enemy is thinking that you didn’t already know.

That BS rationalization for publishing enemy propaganda is used all the time here on FR, but it’s no better than distributing child porn so we know what the pornographers are thinking.

[Rocco DiPippo]

Just sent my LGB masterpiece to Bildo Lueders on the Bulwark FB page. Lol! Let's Go Brandon Song

[griswold3]

FFA is now a “racist” mob for chanting LGB at convention in Indianapolis. My gdaughter ,who has her State degree,was questioned about this during an interview. The Diversity Judge asked what ffa could do to end its racism. SMDH

[McGruff]

Bill Lueders, born in Milwaukee in 1959, is former editor of The Progressive magazine. Previously he was the Money and Politics Project Director for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism for four years; there he wrote a weekly column that appeared in newspapers statewide. Prior to that, he was the news editor of Isthmus weekly newspaper in Madison for 25 years.

He also serves as the elected president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, a statewide group that works to protect public access to government meetings and records.

[joma89]

Let’s go brandon!

[.44 Special]

All you need to know is this:
Brandon is so proud that his son has a penis fixation.
Not to mention that his son is the smartest man he’s ever met.
Says it all.

[GranTorino]

You mean no new taxes bush? The CIA stooge?
Screw him.

[GranTorino]

You look scary in that mask!

[DoodleBob]

The tearing up of the American flag is a nice touch. Glad you’re doing well.

[DoodleBob]

First, thank you for commenting and your engagement.

Second, as someone else noted, ten months later and LGB is STILL triggering these losers.

Third, the NeverTrumpers are now outright using editors of leftist rags as their writers.

Fourth, their "authoritative" source on the LGB episode is an AP article that took five people to write, and it still got the facts wrong....deliberate error propagation.

Fifth, the Kristol Krowd reached freakish levels of cognitive dissonance in this article: "The Republican delusion that portrays Joe Biden as a doddering and sinister figure" and "Biden is the oldest president in our nation’s history, a childhood stutterer, given to occasional gaffes." That's like saying "Bill Clinton is a solid family man and remains married to his sweetheart Hillary, despite a modest stumble decades ago."

Sixth, the author is getting some direct ridicule for this piece.

Posting enemy articles, to understand directly what they're thinking, is comparable to a SOX control expert writing about intentional evasions of controls. It provides for learning about what the Bad Guys are thinking, refinement of the process, and strengthening of the control environment.

My apologies to those who are so gifted and smart that they don't need ANY intel. Many mere mortals seem to appreciate it, and they can discern between child porn and TDS.

[SamAdams76]

That is why I like the "Let's Go Brandon" phrase so much. It was such a huge backfire for the Ministry of Propaganda.

The reporterette involved thought she was being clever and was expecting to get a nice pat on the back from her masters for her neutering for the TV audience what the crowd was actually chanting.

But we weren't fooled back home. Instead, "Let's Go Brandon" became a polite euphemism for what we all really think of the usurper Joe Biden. We can say that phrase anywhere without being obscene and everybody will know what we are REALLY saying.

The phrase is right up there with "Bless Your Heart."

[DouglasKC]

WHY this phrase took off is because was telling us that more people voted for Biden and the far left then ever. There was no dissent according to them and if you thought the election was rigged then you were a lonely nutcase. Then unprompted the crowd gets their voice out and the lib reporter does not report accurately on purpose the chant. Very 1984. So WE use the leftist phrase used to hide the real chant.

[enumerated]

“My apologies to those who are so gifted and smart that they don’t need ANY intel. Many mere mortals seem to appreciate it..”

No doubt, the ones who “appreciate it” are the sanctimonious Leftists you give a platform to when you publish their garbage. I’m surprised they don’t send you a royalty check for distributing their propaganda and keeping it alive for another news cycle.

The point is that there is no “intel” here - just the same predictable Leftist spin and fake outrage.

One need not be “smart” or “gifted” to see that.

[DoodleBob]

....and yet, in the past few days, you posted enthusiastically to articles from the MSM, and the two leading toilets for allegedly conservative "news" that routinely fail basic fact-checking and get things way wrong, Gateway Pundit and American Thinker.

It's Sunday. God be with you. Have a good day.

[Lurkinanloomin]

They are responding because it has only spread wider and gotten bigger, there are Let’s Go Brandon items of every kind everywhere now.

[enumerated]

I do make comments, but I don’t think I’ve ever posted anything here.

If I ever do post an article or link, it will be something I believe is true and worth reading - I will not spread Leftist garbage and disinformation.

[DoodleBob]

Understood. Be well FRiend.

[nascarnation]

Brandon had a 13th place finish at Michigan yesterday. His small underfunded team continues to overacheive.

[SauronOfMordor]

The Left is allowed to be as boorish as they want, but we are supposed to stay courteous.

Well, screw that.

[Rocco DiPippo]

Thanks, man! Yeah, I’m living the dream. . .