Before last year’s Talladega NASCAR Xfinity Series race, very few people had ever heard of Brandon Brown, outside the NASCAR community. But when an on-air personality, watching the driver aim towards his first career victory in the Sparks 300 by saying, “Let’s Go Brandon,” everything changed. Here was a racer who now has a single victory, 16 top ten results and nary a pole position, but he managed to become famous – not only for his win on the 2.66-mile massive oval in Alabama, but for those three words.
They were taken out of context and used – and are still being used – by those who believe the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from the former president, Donald John Trump.
Brown who, like all racers is on the prowl for sponsorship dollars 24/7/365, thought he had found the perfect partner for 2022 in LGBcoin.io, a cyber-coin venture that is aimed to profit from the three words, “Let’s Go Brandon” and their subliminal meaning. Dubbed “America’s Coin”, meme cryptocurrency is intended to focus on the vulgar meaning that the words being chanted in support of the race winner turned around.
Since winning the race, Brown hasn’t talked much about the extraneous result, but then the New York Times did a story about the driver on December 19th entitled, “Brandon Brown just wants to drive his race car.” When interviewed, the driver said he had no desire to be involved in politics, in particular the politics surrounding the chant.
All along NASCAR has made certain it doesn’t want to be involved in this and other political memes, as had Brown, but Brown did state he’d spend the 2022 campaign focused on issues important to him and to the country by using a different tagline: “Let’s Go America.”
BrandonBuilt Motorsports submitted its LGBCoin.io sponsorship proposal and paint scheme to NASCAR for approval on Christmas day and received notification from NASCAR that stated they followed the standard approval process a day later. “We received written approval on the sponsors from a NASCAR Racing Operations official on December 26, 2021. The team subsequently moved forward with an announcement only after being provided with this approval,” the team said in a Tuesday, January 4th statement.
“The sponsor approval was unambiguous – the first four words of the email from NASCAR state, ’The sponsors are approved… ‘ The only feedback offered was related to minor graphic design changes to ensure legibility on the track at 170 mph. We will continue to work with NASCAR and look forward to resolving this matter and clearing the air as soon as possible.”
Not so fast.
Just one day later, NASCAR announced it has denied the Brown sponsorship after all, notifying BrandonBuilt Motorsports on Tuesday night that the original request was not sent through the appropriate portal and was incorrectly approved without proper understanding of LGBcoin. NASCAR stated that sponsor’s submission wasn’t clear, as well. And the portal for the 2022 season wasn’t yet available for submissions when the LGBcoin sponsorship proposal was submitted. The submission was performed through email and was listed as cryptocurrency without noting any political association.
After the difficult 2020 election, NASCAR decided to move away from political sponsorships and paint schemes and is expected to produce guidelines for teams on that subject in the coming days. NASCAR officials had discussed this particular issue at the Phoenix season finale and informed the BrandonBuilt team that sponsorship from LGBcoin would not be approved if submitted.
The NASCAR Xfinity rule book clearly states the sanction’s rules on team sponsors: “NASCAR may refuse to permit a Competitor to participate in an Event if NASCAR determines that any advertising, sponsorship or similar agreement to which the Competitor is or will be a party, is detrimental to the sport, to NASCAR, Series Sponsor, or to the Promoter for any reason, including without limitation, the public image of the sport.”
Wrong as usual Anne. Here are the real “big lies” they were chanting about:
1. “I’m going to crush the virus!”
2. “There’s no border crisis”
3. “Don’t worry the inflation is only temporary”
4. “Yes the Afghanistan withdrawal was a success”
5. “Mayor Pete is working hard on the supply chain crisis from home on his 6 month maternity leave”
Stick to what you get paid to write about Anne and leave the politics out of it.
EXACTLY!!! Well said dk1.
Typical nascar BS. They don’t want any political involvement associated with themselves, but all they do reflects political BS
“They were taken out of context and used – and are still being used – by those who believe the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from the former president, Donald John Trump.”
You should refrain from posting your political opinions, Anne.
There is plenty of evidence of election interference and fraud, and unless and until we have a non-biased media and fair courts, we’ll probably never know who actually won that election.