Donald Trump's "Bing Bong" Speech

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About

Donald Trump's "Bing Bong" Speech is a nonsensical phrase uttered by the American businessman and Republican presidential candidate to mockingly describe how political lobbying works during a keynote speech he delivered at the Republican Party's "Lincoln Day" event in Birch Run, Michigan. Upon entering online circulation in August 2015, the soundbite of Trump saying the words "bing bong" became a popular audio material for parodies and remixes on Vine and YouTube.

Origin

On August 11th, 2015, Donald Trump delivered the keynote speech at the Republican Party's Lincoln Day event held in Birch Run, Michigan. During his hour-long speech, Trump openly criticized his then-rival GOP candidate Jeb Bush and opponent Hillary Clinton for their reliance on lobbyists and special interest groups to fund their campaigns, even resorting to hand gestures to mimic the movements of a robotic puppeteer (shown below).

[This video has been removed]

“Jeb Bush or Hillary, or one of these politicians, all controlled by lobbyists and special interests--and donors, people like me from previous months--total control. Bing bing, bong bong bong, bing bing. You know what that is, right?”

Spread

Donald Trump's nonsensical rhetoric was subsequently highlighted by virtually all major U.S. news outlets and political journalists who were covering the event, with CNN Politics^[10] uploading an isolated video clip of the soundbite to its official Vine channel that same day. Within the next 72 hours, the Vine clip became an instant hit as it began making the rounds on news sites and in the blogosphere, including Gawker, Death & Taxes and SomeECards.

On August 13th, 2015, YouTube remix artist Jonathan Mann uploaded an audio-spliced and autotuned mashup music video sampling Donald Trump's "bing bing, bong bong" soundbite in combination with the Crazy Frog Brothers video (shown below).

While many of the musical remixes of Trump's "bing bong" speech began to surface online as early as in October 2015, the media coverage of the remix phenomenon on Vine and YouTube didn't occur until early March 2016, when BuzzFeed ran a compilation of some of the most notable instances in an article titled "19 Donald Trump Vines That Prove He Might Secretly Be A Musical Genius."^[7]