I’m sure you’ve heard about the jerk who said “let’s go Brandon” (aka “fuck Joe Biden”) to the president on Christmas eve. If you were mercifully spared this story on your family holiday, here is the gist:
Biden and Schmeck discussed presents Schmeck’s four children were hoping to receive, and how one, Hunter, shared a name with the president’s son and grandson. Schmeck said he was hoping for a “quiet night”.
Biden sad: “Lots of luck, dad.”
All on the call laughed.
At the end of the call, Schmeck said: “Merry Christmas and Let’s go Brandon.”
“Let’s go Brandon, I agree,” Biden said, as his wife winced.
Biden also said: “By the way are you in Oregon? Where’s your home?”
But the call was disconnected.
“Let’s go Brandon” originated in an interview with a racing car driver by a TV reporter who may have misheard a crowd’s obscene chant.
It has flourished in rightwing and pro-Trump circles – even being promoted by Republican congressmen and the Texas senator Ted Cruz.
Schmeck and his wife promoted the remark on social media. But they met with a tide of opprobrium, including a tweet in which the California congressman Eric Swalwell pointed to Biden’s painful personal history.
“I refuse to believe we are this indecent as people,” the Democrat wrote. “Not on Christmas Eve. And not to a person who lost his wife and daughter at Christmastime. We are better than this. Be kind and Merry Christmas.”
Schmeck, a former police officer, told the Oregonian he was “being attacked for utilising my freedom of speech”.
He also said he had received some potentially threatening phone calls of his own.
“I understand there is a vulgar meaning to ‘Lets go Brandon’ but I’m not that simple-minded, no matter how I feel about him,” Schmeck said.
“[Biden] seems likes he’s a cordial guy. There’s no animosity or anything like that. It was merely just an innocent jest to also express my God-given right to express my frustrations in a joking manner.”
Schmeck said subjects stoking those frustrations with Biden included vaccine mandates and supply chain problems.
He also insisted: “I love him just like I love any other brother or sister.”
Right. He’s a typical Trump jerk, down to the fatious declaration of his allegedly Christian faith.
The wingnuts are all delirious with the fact that Biden replied, “yes, let’s go Brandon” either because he didn’t know about this silly wingnut meme because he has better things to do or because he just decided to shine it on because it was Christmas, fergawdsakes. Either way, he is a much more decent person than this jerk.
I think it’s fine to tell the president to go fuck himself. That really is free speech. There are many great venues available for that. But to do it on Christmas eve during a presidential call with your kids is just trashy. The next time they all clutch their pearls over lefty incivility, I think it’s important to remember this one. It was as classless as they come.