Will Sommer, politics reporter at the Daily Beast, joins Cheddar Politics to explain the origins and significance of the latest online political meme phenomenon - Dark Brandon.

Cheddar Politics

'Dark Brandon,' Explained

Welcome back to cheddar politics in the middle of a stretch of legislative wins for the White House. A strange phenomenon started happening online this month, edited images of President biden with unusual features. Sometimes he has some glowing yellow eyes. Sometimes the red laser eyes. Sometimes he has a grizzled beard and eye patch. But in all of them he is a character that is entirely an invention of the internet. Give us dark Brandon joining us now is will summer politics reporter at the Daily Beast will It's so great to have you on. Let's start with one simple question. Who is dark Brandon? Sure. So dark Brandon is sort of this like alter ego of a hyper effective and maybe sort of malevolent joe biden. Um of course the Brandon comes from the let's go Brandon meme that was embraced by the right as a sort of uh joe biden. Uh another way to say that, but more recently we've seen it embraced by democrats themselves as sort of this um, this kind of like feeling this, but maybe in a, in a good way for democrats, joe biden as you said with laser eyes or maybe he's he's on a throne of skulls, something like that. Now you notice that as we get closer and closer to the midterms, the president is getting a little bit more direct with his rhetoric. He's starting to be a little bit more candidate when it comes to maga republicans and all the above? But what exactly are the origins of this meme? Can we place a day or an event as to where it all came from? Sure. Well, initially Dark Brandon started in the spring? Um it was really embraced by I think very left wing and progressive democrats who were critical of joe biden. And it was sort of an alter ego of this biden who was not ineffectual and kind of bogged down in all these political issues uh in the way that biden really was up until a month or two ago, they saw him as kind of like maybe biden perhaps seems too old and and bumbling in person. But really behind the scenes there's Dark Brandon getting things done but more recently and I think really right around when gas prices started going down, we started seeing inflation drop by the military killed the head of Al Qaeda. Dark Brandon was embraced by more mainstream and establishment democrats as sort of like, yes, now biden is really taking action as you can see here. You know, it's kind of this super spy, dark Brandon with an eye patch, um this kind of stuff. And so we've seen even the White House embraced Dark Brandon. Now, what's getting me is the image of the president on the game of Thrones chair? They're really getting creative there now that actually comes from that actually comes from a chinese propaganda operation that was meant to show biden sort of terrorizing the world, wow. So there's always so many more depth with every single picture a picture is worth 1000 words. now. Why do you think it took until now for democrats to find their own meme? We've seen Let's Go Brandon and Dark Maga have existed with republicans for a while. I mean, why now? And why do you think Dark Brandon's having such a viral moment? Yeah, I mean, really, I think democrats are feeling more confident than they were. I mean, really, I think for about a year after the fall of Afghanistan, the U. S. Military in Afghanistan, I think there was this sense that biden was really admired in all these issues. You know, his legislative agenda was stuck. But just in the past month or so, I think democrats are feeling very confident about the midterms and they want uh an image to sort of expressed in a joking way, this sense that Biden is back, maybe he's he's kind of turning into a more powerful form of himself. There should there be any concern that Dark Brandon uses the same kind of aesthetic flair as means in several right wing communities that we see online. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I think a lot of the visual language is similar in terms of, let's say the glowing eyes, stuff like that. But I talked to some meme experts at the website know your meme, I mean it's amazing that's a job these days, but and they said that a lot of this stuff is not being borrowed directly from these sort of white supremacist means that they share a common root often in anime and other online memes going back, you know, roughly a decade. And so, you know, I think people can consider whether, whether it's concerning that that's the situation, but it is I think the means are not quite as directly linked as they may initially appear. What do you think about the future of memes for specifically left leading democrats or just democrats in general? Do you think that this is a one off viral meme moment from democrats? Or do you think that this might prove that they can't keep up with the online right? Or they can keep up with the online. Right. Well, you know, I think what we're seeing from a I think particularly the White House's embrace of Dark Brandon is this idea that I think the Democratic Party itself is getting more into these memes. And I think we're also seeing this track with some other messaging that I think is trying to take on republicans more directly directly and go on the offense like we thing about after the student loan forgiveness program was announced that republicans who were criticizing it and the White House went out and said, you know, well all these people criticizing it. Got P. P. P. Loans themselves. So I think the Dark Brandon popularization is part of a broader political offense from the administration that's will summer politics Reporter at the Daily Beast, thank you so much for that breakdown. And after the break of pennsylvania, lieutenant Governor John Fetterman is calling on President biden to decriminalize marijuana. We're talking more about that next stay with us on cheddar politics.