On Christmas Eve, President Joe Biden and his wife Jill spoke with NORAD officials and their children as they tracked Santa Claus’ progress that night. At the end of the phone call, a father named Jared said to President Biden, “let’s go, Brandon.” President Biden repeated, “let’s go, Brandon. I agree.”
That phrase, “let’s go, Brandon”, has gone viral across the internet recently. When fans at a NASCAR race this fall, chanted "F--- Joe Biden", a reporter who was interviewing driver Brandon Brown, claimed that the crowd was actually chanting "Let's go, Brandon." So, “Let’s go, Brandon” has become a chant which is a euphemism for “F--- Joe Biden”, and also mocks the leftwing media for continually covering up for our current President’s failures.
At first, I thought it was a clever slogan exposing Joe Biden and the mainstream media. It is a phrase that I have said a number of times, but as I look at the big picture, I realized it is very destructive. We have the right to question and even protest the legitimacy of the 2020 election, but Joe Biden is our President. He was certified. We have the right to disagree with him. We have the right and even the obligation to point out every mistake that he has made, and there have been many. We even have the right to disrespect the President, but as tempting as it is, we should not disrespect the President.
We cannot object to Colin Kaepernick disrespecting our flag and our national anthem because he disagrees with certain things that have happened in America past and present, and then support people disrespecting our President. I fully understand the immense frustration that has led to the “let’s go, Brandon” chant. Joe Biden’s policies have been horrific for our country, and the mainstream media have been derelict in their duty. But if we are to remain a strong country, we must respect our national symbols, and our national institutions, and the office of the Presidency is a national institution. Respecting does not mean blindly accepting and supporting everything our President does or has done. Just as respecting our flag does not mean we agree with every act that has been done under our flag.
There were hundreds of ways Colin Kaepernick could have protested police shootings, but he chose our flag, and our national anthem for a reason. When he kneeled for our flag, he was saying “F--- You, America”. When we say, “Let’s go Brandon”, we are actually saying “F---You, President”. We must not act like them. We must not act like comedienne Kathy Griffin who carried around Donald Trump’s severed head, or actor Robert DeNiro who said, “F--- Trump” at the Tony Awards, or the actors in Central Park who performed a play over and over again simulating the assassination of Donald Trump. In a free country, do these people have the right to attack President Trump these ways? Yes. Should they have? Absolutely not, whether they agreed with him or not. By doing those things, they were not making our country better; they were making our country worse.
And that is their end game. The left wants to destroy our country so they can usher in their socialist/communist utopia which will only be a utopia for a select few. They do that by discrediting our history, disrespecting our symbols, and attacking our institutions. By choosing to act like them, by choosing to disrespect our President like they have, we are doing their work for them.
Unlike the claims of many of Barack Obama’s apologists, disagreeing with the President is not disrespecting the President. We should disagree with Joe Biden openly every time he does something we disagree with. That is our civic duty. But saying “let’s go, Brandon” is disrespecting the Presidency. And we should not disrespect the Presidency even when the current President is disrespecting us. The Office of the Presidency is bigger and more important than the moment we live in, and much bigger and much more important than the man who currently holds the office.
The left wants to diminish the Office of the Presidency, just as they want to destroy the Supreme Court with their plans of packing the court, just as they want to destroy Congress with their talk of doing away with the filibuster, or adding Washington, DC as a state. The foundation of our government and the strength of our country depends on a delicate balance of power between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of our government.
The Democrats do not understand the importance of, or care about that balance of power. That is why the Democrat controlled Congress allowed Joe Biden to legislate through executive fiat by signing more than 50 executive orders in his first 30 days in office without objection; that is why Representative Jayapal has asked President Biden to circumvent Congress, and pass his Build Back Better legislation through executive action; that is what President Barack Obama meant when he said to Congress, “I have a phone and I have a pen”; that is why Democrats champion unconstitutional rulings like in Roe v Wade, and the King v Burwell Obamacare ruling from the Supreme Court. The more the President or Congress or the Supreme Court violates the Constitution, the more discredited the Constitution becomes until it is a useless piece of paper which constrains none of their actions, and no longer supports the delicate balance of power.
The Constitution is the one thing that keeps the left from implementing their communist utopia, and that’s why they must destroy the Constitution by attacking every institution that it empowers – Congress, the Supreme Court, and the office of the Presidency.
Those of us who love our country should criticize our leaders, but it should be done in a respectful way that elevates the discourse which will elevate the country itself. We can and should be fierce, determined, unwavering in our beliefs, but we should never act like those who want to destroy our Country. Our critique and criticism of our sitting President must substantive not ad hominem. We should never fall into the trap believing because they did it, it’s all right for us to do it. It’s not. Our country means too much to us and to the world, to be complicit in our Country’s destruction.
Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.