Darkish Brandon haunts the Fox Information web site on GOP debate day

There’s no escaping him. “Darkish Brandon,” Joe Biden’s timeless alter ego, has appeared on every thing from baseball caps to crop tops. Now, his menacing pink eyes are staring out from the FoxNews.com homepage — the place the primary GOP presidential debate is about to stream later tonight. 

All through your complete day, Biden’s reelection staff will probably be working an advert marketing campaign that includes the meme on the Fox Information web site. The adverts name consideration to Biden’s marketing campaign guarantees to guard abortion rights, decrease the price of pharmaceuticals, and defend social safety, as first reported by Individuals journal Wednesday. 

“Tax cuts for yacht house owners?” one advert reads. “Good luck with that, champ.”

For these unfamiliar with the lore, the “Darkish Brandon” meme originated out of a conservative insult lobbed on the president throughout a NASCAR race in 2021. Racegoers yelling “Fuck Joe Biden” have been misheard by a reporter as saying “Let’s go, Brandon,” and thus, a brand new slogan for Donald Trump supporters was born. 

However over the course of the final two years, the GOP’s beloved anti-Biden rallying cry has morphed right into a boon for the president’s reelection marketing campaign. Biden staffers and voters on-line embraced the joke to speak that, sure, the 80-year-old was the bogeyman conservatives believed him to be, if solely as a result of he was efficiently pushing via an agenda they hated.

Whereas many individuals, myself included, have bemoaned the marketing campaign’s incessant “Darkish Brandon” deployment, the caricature appears to be working. Earlier this month, Axios reported that greater than half of all of the Biden reelection marketing campaign’s merch gross sales have come from Brandon-themed gadgets.

That is all to say that it’s unlikely the meme will disappear anytime quickly. Hell, it’s solely the start of the 2024 election season. “Darkish Brandon,” love him or hate him, will return.