LET'S GO, DARK BRANDON!

While NBC Sports reporter Kelli Stavast interviewed NASCAR driver Brandon Brown after he won his first Xfinity Series race at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama on October 2, 2021, a Trump-supporting crowd could be heard chanting "F*** Joe Biden" just behind them. Stavast immediately re-translated and sanitised the chant for her television audience, pretending to hear them saying "Let's Go, Brandon!"

Thus, an iconic meme was born, instantly going viral across social media as the MAGA crowd adopted the adjusted phrase as a way to protest Biden's presidency while disguising the vulgarity of their original chant. This phrase subsequently inspired endless merchandise and even rap songs by Bryson Gray and Loza Alexander. By this stage the "Let's Go, Brandon!" meme had become a short hand critique of anti-Trump media’s perceived efforts to ignore the voice of MAGA supporters, helping to explain the meme’s longevity both online and offline for several years after Stavast inadvertently created it, live on television.

Things got even more interesting in the summer of 2022 when members of Biden's White House staff attempted to invert the "Let's Go, Brandon!" meme, creatively weaponising it to their advantage by creating the "Dark Brandon" persona for the 46th President. In this reimagining, Biden embraces the euphemism of the chant, becoming a superhero-like figure with laser eyes whenever a major political or legislative success is achieved. This rebranding of the original negative connotation was a rare example of the left countering Trump-inspired meme culture, which had become a cultural phenomenon ever since Trump first announced his presidential run on June 16, 2015. President Biden even playfully referenced the meme during the 2023 White House Correspondents' Dinner, where he deliberately slipped on his signature aviator sunglasses to invoke the "Dark Brandon" optics—proving (on advice from his staff) that he was "hip" to internet culture .

Then, in a final twist last night as the American election results were announced in Trump’s favor, the MAGA crowd on X inverted the “Dark Brandon” meme back at their Democratic counterparts, suggesting that Biden had deliberately sabotaged Kamala Harris’s campaign to run for president after being unceremoniously deposed by figures like Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and George Clooney. Clearly not so senile as to miss the fact that he was being replaced, Biden has, in recent months, appeared to do all sorts of strange things (including wearing a MAGA cap) that seem to defy his party’s interests during a volatile race to the White House for Kamala.

“Dark Brandon,” it seemed, had now gone rogue—as if Biden had decided to unify and make peace with his original Trump-supporting detractors, bringing to mind that famous line (paraphrased) from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight: “You either die a villain or live long enough to see yourself become the hero (meme).”