President Joe Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign has launched a trollish ad campaign to coincide with the first Republican presidential primary debate – including a digital ad buy at FoxNews.com. The ad appearing on the Fox News website features Biden as the “Dark Brandon” meme with the message referencing Democrat efforts to codify the right to murder babies, with the strap line: “Get real, Jack. I’m bringing Roe back.”
Variations of the ad have also been placed on billboards around Milwaukee, the host city for the first Republican debate.
The ‘Dark Brandon’ meme originated as an attempt by the Biden White House to retake the “Let’s Go Brandon” meme that detractors chanted at the President for much of the later-half of 2021 and early 2022. Democrat staffers ran with the notion of Biden as ‘Brandon’ and then simply copied the style of another online conservative meme, “Dark MAGA.”
Almost immediately, however, staffers ran into trouble with their new ‘meme’.
Andrew Bates, the White House Deputy Press Secretary, posted a variation of the “Dark Brandon” meme featuring a Parteiadler – the eagle symbol used by the German Nazi Party during Hitler’s Third Reich. The aesthetic for the image of Biden himself with glowing eyes and an unsettling smirk, Democrats ripped that off from propaganda created by the Chinese Communist Party.
Apparently this is Chinese anti-Biden propaganda, but it kinda just makes Biden seem metal af pic.twitter.com/C8q2abiARf
— New Liberals 🌐🇺🇦 (@CNLiberalism) May 21, 2021
Despite the “Dark Brandon” meme being closely associated with Nazi imagery and Chinese communist propaganda, the Biden White House has continued to lean in to the aesthetic – so much so that they tried to make “Dark Brandon” a reality for Biden’s Sept. 1, 2022 address in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Billed as the “Continued Battle for the Soul of the Nation”, Biden – flanked by two uniformed Marines – angrily addressed the nation from a darkened stage with menacing red backlighting behind him. Some critics called the vindictive rant against his political opponents “authoritarian.”
The latest iteration of the “Dark Brandon” being used by the Biden White House may mark a new effort to ‘reclaim’ a meme. After the Philadelphia speech, Democrats mostly backed off using the a-bit-too-on-the-nose meme. Right-wing internet memers, however, were quick to expropriate it for their own ends. The image of “Dark Brandon” started to be associated with some of the more disturbing revelations about Joe Biden and his family life – including an entry in his daughter Ashley’s diary that detailed how her father would take showers with her when she was young, attributing this to sexual compulsions she developed as an adult.
Lying Biden/Dark Brandon peeing in the shower with Ashley
Follow for more good times. pic.twitter.com/2jihCykTtC
— 🗽Automated Liberty🗽 (@theeZR0) February 10, 2023