NEW YORK, NY – An MSNBC panel has called for an FBI investigation into an Oregon man who, during a live broadcast phone call with President Joe Biden and his wife Jill, signed off using the infamous phrase “Let’s Go Brandon,” a conservative dig that means, “F**k Joe Biden.”
Former Medford police officer Jared Schmeck had called into a live NORAD Santa tracker call on Christmas Eve and was put on-air live with the Bidens; the call progressed pleasantly enough until the President and his wife wished Schmeck and his family “a wonderful Christmas,” at which time the father of four responded with “Merry Christmas…Let’s go Brandon!”
This prompted Biden – who seemed completely unaware of the vulgar connotation – to innocently repeat the phrase with a chuckle. “Let’s go Brandon, I agree,” Biden said before a nationwide audience.
Later, appearing on Bannon’s “War Room” podcast to discuss the fallout from the call, the MAGA hat-wearing Schmeck – who had previously claimed he didn’t intend to be “vulgar” and that he had “nothing against Mr. Biden” – told Bannon that that he was a “Christian” and that he was a supporter of former President Donald Trump, repeating his currently unproven claims of voter fraud.
“I am a Christian man. For me, it’s God first and foremost,” Schmeck said. I don’t follow any one man blindly. Some of the media’s run with that and said I don’t support Donald Trump. That’s absolutely false, Donald Trump is my president and he should still be the president right now. The election was 100 percent stolen.”
Schmeck claimed that he was simply exercising his right to free speech, and had used the “Let’s Go Brandon” phrase simply to express frustration with “Joe Biden, the administration, the leftist mob, the cancel culture, the mainstream media.”
However, not all have seen it that way. MSNBC’s Deadline: White House anchor Nicolle Wallace was recently joined by Missouri senator Claire McCaskill and Jason Johnson political commentator and associate professor at Morgan State University Jason Johnson.
When the subject of Schmeck’s call with the President came up all three were aghast, with Wallace noting the irony of a man claiming to be devoutly religious using a vulgar phrase to directly address the president.
“So, what you heard there, was an Oregon dad, his four kids,” Wallace said. “He’s a self-described free-thinking American a follower of Jesus Christ. He called into the NORAD tracking center on Christmas Eve. What he said, ‘let’s go Brandon’ means ‘eff Joe Biden’ in very, very, very thinly coded right-wing lexicon.”
“This is the slow motion insurrection, Jason, in full color,” Wallace added – referring to the participants in the January 6 U.S. Capitol riots – to which Jason Johnson responded that “Let’s Go Brandon” has essentially become “the cry of insurrectionists.”
“When these people are speaking, they are not joking,” Johnson said. “MAGA isn’t about taxes. You know. ‘Let’s go Brandon’ isn’t about what you feel about supply chain issues and gas. It is the cry of insurrectionists. It is the cry of people who want to violently take over this country and oppress anyone who is not like them. And that’s what makes this dangerous.”
Johnson then seemed to shockingly suggest that the federal authorities should investigate individuals like Schmeck who use the “Brandon” phrase, as he said they could potentially be dangerous.
“And to the degree that Joe Biden can laugh it off or anything else like that, that’s fine,” he said. “But I hope we have a Justice Department and an FBI and a CIA that investigates where the anger that leads to these kinds of statements comes through. Because these people already attacked us with guns. Do you think they are going to come back with something less aggressive next time if they feel like they can speak this way to the president? I don’t think so.”