Brandon Brown.Photo: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images
Race car driver Brandon Brown says he has “zero desire to be involved in politics” — which is tricky, because the 28-year-old NASCAR star’s name has become synonymous among conservatives with the anti-Joe Biden chant"let’s go Brandon."
While some in the crowd at the race could be heard chanting “f— Joe Biden,” the reporter suggested instead that they might be cheering “let’s go Brandon,” in the driver’s honor.
Biden’s critics turned the confusion into a meme and the phrase, as a stand-in for “f— Joe Biden,” has appeared at sporting events, on clothes and signs and more. Republican lawmakers have also taken it to Congress.
Brown, however, is surprised that his name has taken off in such a political way. HetoldThe New York Timesin a profile published Sundaythat he’s uninterested in being a poster-child for any side in the fray, though he is also making clear that he has private political opinions of his own.
Brandon Brown.Chris Graythen/Getty Images
As the NASCAR driver explained, his Talladega race win was meant to be celebratory and a way for him to grow his sponsorships and increase his recognition as an athlete. But once “let’s go Brandon” went viral, it became something else.
“I really wanted to capitalize on that,” Brown said of his race win in September. “But with this meme going viral, it was more of, I had to stay more silent, because everybody wanted it to go on to the political side. I’m about the racing side.”
Brown, who is a Republican, told theTimesthat he isn’t an outspoken political person and declined to say whom he voted for in the last election.
He has been thinking instead about the job at hand, he said. He wonders whether the phrase itself is really “productive.”
“The issue is, I don’t know enough about politics to really form a true opinion, so I really focus on racing,” he said.
NASCAR President Steve Phelps previously said he sympathizes with Brown and that the organization as a whole has no interest in being associated with the anti-Biden chant.
“I feel for Brandon,” Phelps toldreporters in November. “I think unfortunately it speaks to the state of where we are as a country. We do not want to associate ourselves with politics, the left or the right. We obviously have and we’ve always had, as a sport, tremendous respect for the office of the president — no matter who is sitting.”
Phelps continued then: “Do we like the fact that it kind of started with NASCAR and then is gaining ground elsewhere? No, we’re not happy about that. But we will continue to make sure that we have respect for the office of the president.”
However unintended it was initially, Brown’s entry into the political conversation has since led him to open up about what he told theTimesis a “frustration” on certain issues that he shares with those who say the chant.
Inan op-ed forNewsweekpublished Monday, Brown wrote that he “never expected to be in the passenger seat of my own viral moment.”
“But I’m also no longer going to be silent about the situation I find myself in, and why millions of Americans are chanting my name. I hear them, even if Washington does not,” he wrote.
He avoided specifics in his column beyond singling out the price of gas and inflation — both major Republican criticisms of the Biden administration, though the White House says solving both are also priorities.
“How you vote is none of my business. Instead, I will use what free time I have to highlight the struggle we all feel and share, as Americans,” Brown wrote inNewsweek.
He went on: “To my fans, to NASCAR fans and to everyone who has chanted my name: I dedicate myself this upcoming season to compete hard on the racetrack and to spotlight issues that are important to me and to millions of Americans across the country. ‘Let’s Go America.’ "
source: people.com
