Joe Biden Scores Win Over Tucker Carlson's Putin Interview

Joe Biden has scored a viral social media win after a meme he shared to poke fun at a conspiracy theory about him gained more views than commentator Tucker Carlson's interview with Vladimir Putin on the same platform.

Both the U.S. president's post—showing him as the "Dark Brandon" meme—and Carlson's video of his interview with the Russian leader in Moscow gained millions of views on X, formerly Twitter. But the tweet from Biden's X account has since been seen over 211 million times.

At the time of writing, Carlson's interview has been watched just over 199 million times on the same platform.

Biden's post came after the Kansas City Chiefs' Super Bowl LVIII victory over the San Francisco 49ers and had a caption saying the game was "Just like we drew it up." Some conspiracy theories by prominent commentators have said popstar Taylor Swift's dating of Chief tight end Travis Kelce was just a charade to try and drum up support for Biden's presidential campaign.

Newsweek has approached a spokesperson for Carlson and the White House for comment via email.

The Dark Brandon meme stems from when NASCAR driver Brandon Brown raced the Sparks 300 at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama.

During an interview, NBC Sports reporter Kelli Stavast appeared to mishear chants of "f*** Joe Biden" from the crowd at the October 2021 event and repeated them as "Let's go Brandon." Since then, Biden's detractors have used the name Dark Brandon as a way of referring to the original, more profane version and often post pictures of the president with photoshopped devil eyes.

Biden's post-Super Bowl tweet using the meme sparked a mixed response.

"You're making me very happy with this tweet," a political scientist Rachel Bitecofer said on X.

Democratic writer and podcast host Victor Shi added: "This is so amazing."

Others were less impressed. "At first I thought this was a parody account but what the hell is this," news publication Raws Alerts said.

EsfandTV, a streamer account, tweeted: "Which intern tweeted this?"

In January, the Pentagon debunked Fox News host Jesse Watters' reference to a theory that Swift is working for the United States Department of Defense.

Former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy tweeted in January: "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." He added that the theory was "wild speculation."

There is no evidence to support the theory, and Swift, who did endorse Biden during his 2020 campaign, has not endorsed any candidate thus far.

The president's likely opponent Donald Trump has weighed in on the discussion, however, saying he felt there was "no way" the singer would support his Democratic political foe because of legislation Trump signed off on when he was president.

On his Truth Social media platform, he said: "I signed and was responsible for the Music Modernization Act for Taylor Swift and all other Musical Artists. Joe Biden didn't do anything for Taylor, and never will."

The Music Modernization Act, signed by Trump in 2018, allowed copyright law to be updated to deal with streaming. The act "changes the way songwriters and music publishers are paid statutory mechanical royalties," according to the Library of Congress' website summary.

Despite this, Swift still endorsed Biden over Trump for president in 2020, two years after the MMA was signed.

Carlson, meanwhile, posted his full interview with Putin that ran to over two hours long on February 8.

Putin made numerous headline-making statements including his rationale—based on falsehoods—for invading Ukraine and that Putin was "willing to negotiate" an end to the war.

The Russian president also said he would not invade other NATO countries.

Putin was not asked about subjects such as alleged political assassinations or the lack of choice in Russia's upcoming presidential election.

Carlson defended this during a discussion at the World Government Summit in Dubai and said: "I didn't talk about the things that every other American media outlet talks about ... those [subjects] are covered and because I have spent my life talking to people who run countries in various countries and have concluded the following: that every leader kills people, including my leader."