Well, that didn’t take long.
During the two-week lead-up to Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas, we were repeatedly told that linking the Kansas City Chiefs, the team’s star tight end Travis Kelce and his girlfriend Taylor Swift to President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign was a dumb narrative at best, a conspiracy theory at worst.
For instance, I can’t tell you how many times I saw this Vivek Ramaswamy X post repeated in febrile pieces and social media jeremiads about Chiefs-Biden theories on the right getting out of control:
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.
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) January 29, 2024
Now, Mr. Ramaswamy, a former presidential contender and corporate CEO, probably could have thought that one through better — but had none of the people wringing their hands over this tweet ever chanced upon sports radio? Ever? For five minutes?
About half the callers and a quarter of the hosts believe every big game is rigged when it doesn’t go their way. And one does not even need to venture onto the radio dial to find individuals like this. I know fellow Yankees fans who seem to believe the team would go 162-0 and undefeated through the playoffs every year if the umps didn’t have it out for them.
And, for that matter, it wasn’t as if there wasn’t some reason to believe that there was a rooting interest at 1600 Pennsylvania. A New York Times report last month indicated that the administration was putting a heavy emphasis on celebrity surrogates and influencers to come out for the president in 2024; Swift supported Biden in 2020, although that was a much more quiet form of support than what the White House apparently envisions this time.
The Times report said Biden’s “aides plan to couple a direct assault on Mr. Trump with a heavy focus on abortion rights, casting the issue as symbolic of larger conservative efforts to restrict personal freedoms.” The report added that Swift was “the endorsement of their wildest dreams.”
Do you think the Super Bowl was rigged?
Yes: 60% (3 Votes)
No: 40% (2 Votes)
But, after the Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in the second overtime Super Bowl ever, 25-22, one would have expected the White House to stay quiet. Let fans remember the moment as something apolitical.
I certainly could have brought myself to that point. Aside from the fact that I was rooting for the 49ers because of the improbable story of quarterback Brock Purdy, I could also console myself as a football fan with the fact that I cared about neither team with any great fervor — and the game, viewed dispassionately, was one of the best Super Bowls ever played.
As a conservative, I could derive some comfort from the fact that the 49ers are (or were) the favorite team of Democratic Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Eric Swalwell of California and the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, also of the Golden State. It’s cope, but solid cope nonetheless.
But no, this is the Biden administration, so they didn’t give the moment some space. Instead, this is the cryptic, thoroughly unsettling tweet that came out from Biden’s account shortly after the Chiefs won:
Just like we drew it up. pic.twitter.com/9NBvc5nVZE
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 12, 2024
That’s not creepy at all. For those of you unfamiliar with the glowing-eyes picture of Biden, that’s not his last three brain cells going supernova, but instead part of a popular liberal meme called “Dark Brandon.” TL;DR: It’s about as dumb and inscrutable as that tweet was.
Now, first off, I’m assuming Joe himself didn’t come up with this. The Super Bowl ended at well after 10 p.m. Eastern Time — well past the time the octogenarian Biden is in his prime.
For example, below is Biden in a rare post-8 p.m. media briefing last week following the disastrous special counsel report that advised against charging the president for willfully retaining classified material because Biden came across as so senile during interviews that a jury would likely see him as “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
While attempting to prove he remembers the date of his son Beau’s death, Joe Biden appears to forget where his son’s rosary was from:
“I wear since the day he died, every single day the rosary he got from Our Lady of…” pic.twitter.com/hiIa6YKiQ2
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) February 9, 2024
Hats off to the geniuses who scheduled Joe, “my memory is fine…the President of Mexico, Sisi” Biden’s press conference, literally RIGHT AFTER the entire world saw what a competent, intelligent leader without cognitive decline, looks like. pic.twitter.com/SakHgfLoi0
— Fiorella Isabel (@FiorellaIsabelM) February 9, 2024
Or maybe he did send out the post, considering that most of the responses to this cryptic reaction were, um, not giving the president the benefit of being “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
This is creepy AF
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 12, 2024
President Biden’s post after Taylor Swift wins the Super Bowl. https://t.co/OHto9iMMA1
— Anthony Cabassa (@AnthonyCabassa_) February 12, 2024
Oh yeah! pic.twitter.com/PO6Its2El7
— Brick Suit (@Brick_Suit) February 12, 2024
It’s not a parody account? Holy crap!
— Grant Montgomery 2.0 🇺🇸🇮🇱🇯🇵 (@monsgomeric) February 12, 2024
This was posted at 10:50pm. About 5 hours after Joe is tucked into bed by the nurses. Which intern posted this?
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) February 12, 2024
And this is the anti-Trump side’s attempt to dunk on it:
No it’s not, it’s Joe owning the cultist MAGA and it’s perfect
— Irish Eyes ‘r smilin (@mmoore229) February 12, 2024
Yes, Biden’s people dunked on the right so hard that … they made a joke about fixing the Super Bowl, which gave even more air to the theory and made the administration look super-thirsty for Taylor Swift’s endorsement.
It’s such a brilliant own that they … managed to make their boss look creepy and let the whole Swiftie-fix conspiracy theory, such as it actually exists and is taken seriously — it’s not, really, but darned if the left isn’t going to try to make it happen — fester on longer. And they did it on the official personal account of the nominal leader of the free world.
Boy. They showed them, all right. Whoever they are. The White House is playing 8D deep-sea Go while Trump and his people are stuck with 3D underwater chess. Take that, conservatives!
Or, they just came up with a creepy meme that made it that much harder to portray Biden as a dignified elder statesman above the fray of Trump-ish shenanigans.
In fact, I’d posit it’s the latter. Great work, Biden memesters.
