The White House on Friday celebrated the passage of the “Build Back Better” agenda bill in the House by mocking the popular anti-Biden chant “Let’s Go Brandon.”
“Let’s go BBBrandon!!!,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates tweeted after the radical legislation passed the House Friday morning following a valiant stand by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to delay the measure. McCarthy spoke for a record eight hours on the House floor.
🇺🇸🍻Let's go BBBrandon!!! 🎉🎉🎉 https://t.co/5UEoDmtFpw
— Andrew Bates (@AndrewJBates46) November 19, 2021
The anti-Biden chant “Let’s Go, Brandon” emerged as a more family-friendly alternative to “Fuck Joe Biden” chants after an NBC Sports reporter suggested a crowd at a NASCAR race was chanting “Let’s Go, Brandon” instead of the more vulgar chant while interviewing winner Brandon Brown at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama in October. Both chants have taken off in popularity across the country, with regular people shouting either phrase at sporting events, concerts, and in crowds everywhere. The White House has struggled reckoning with the phenomenon, while GOP opponents of the president have seized on the chant to fan the flames of public disapproval of the president whose administration is mired in repeated failure.
Bates’s decision, on behalf of the White House, to attempt to co-opt the phrase represents just the latest effort of an administration in decline to try to save face amid growing crises – and try to spin the absurdly negative development for the White House, which is a literal national spontaneous movement of wide-scale chants from crowds expressing disapproval of the president, into somehow being positive. Tying it to the massively unpopular BBB legislation passing one chamber of Congress — polling shows the president’s plan is deeply unpopular and the public widely disapproves of it — may prove not just futile but undermine further efforts to win Americans over to the president’s side.
Nonetheless, Bates’s move is clearly part of a broader push from the White House to make it look like they are doing something productive, even if the public sees incompetence and failure. Additional senior White House officials congratulated themselves on a job well done, though the legislation has almost no hope of containing the same provisions after the Senate considers the package.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted Friday morning that Biden celebrated by calling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to congratulate her on the package’s passage.
It is unknown if Biden called Pelosi from the hospital room, where he received a colonoscopy. A poll Wednesday found that a plurality of registered voters believe Biden is not “mentally fit,” while only 40 percent believe he “is in good health.”
.@POTUS spoke with @VP and @WHCOS at approximately 11:35am this morning. @POTUS was in good spirits and at that time resumed his duties. He will remain at Walter Reed as he completes the rest of his routine physical.
— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) November 19, 2021
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain celebrated the package’s passage by noting children will receive more years of government education, which includes Critical Race Theory in some states. “We are going from 12 to 14 years of free universal public education,” he said.
Just one provision in BBB: universal pre-school. For the first time in decades we are adding two years to universal education. Think about it. We are going from 12 to 14 years of free universal public education.
— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) November 19, 2021
“Think about it,” he added.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø
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