Joe Biden shared a meme on social media last night trolling conspiracy theorists who believed he rigged the Super Bowl.
In a tweet shared moments after the Kansas City Chiefs won their second consecutive Super Bowl, the POTUS posted an image embracing the "Dark Brandon" meme. "Just like we drew it up," the post reads, in an apparent reference to a right-wing conspiracy theory the Democratic President would ensure a victory for the Chiefs so that Taylor Swift—who is dating tight end Travis Kelce—could endorse Biden for the 2024 election.
The tweet has been seen over 120 million times and has gotten over 430k favorites and 184k retweets since it was published.
Some Twitter (we refuse to call it X) users found the post to be in poor taste and took it as a reference to Israel's bombardment of Rafah last night.
In the lead-up to Sunday's big game, Biden's administration launched a TikTok account where he was asked by a member of his team if he was "deviously plotting to rig the season so the Chiefs would make the Super Bowl." In response, he said, "I'd get in trouble if I told you." The TikTok video then cuts to the 'Dark Brandon' image.
The 'Dark Brandon' meme was birthed out of a combination of things, starting with an incident in which a reporter misheard a "Fuck Joe Biden" chant at a Nascar event as "Let's go Brandon." It later evolved into the 'Dark Brandon' meme among both critics and supporters, either fear-mongering and mocking his policies or celebrating them.
As reported by Rolling Stone last month, Taylor Swift's presence at the Kansas City Chiefs games incited the wrath of ultra-online, right-wing types. Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, for instance, tweeted last month, "I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months."
Travis Kelce also signed a $20 million deal with Pfizer to endorse its COVID-19 vaccine last year, and we all know how much right-wingers hate vaccines. Needless to say, the San Francisco 49ers became the favorite of many Republicans, regardless of whether the team shares their values or not.
Desperate to make the Super Bowl about himself, Donald Trump weighed in on social media hours before the game, posting that it would be "disloyal" for Swift to endorse Biden because he made her "so much money" though the Music Modernization Act he signed in 2018.
