Ladies and Gentlemen, We Got Him

About

"Ladies and Gentlemen, We Got Him" is a quote originally uttered by American diplomat Paul Bremer during a 2003 press conference announcing the capture of Saddam Hussein. In 2018, the scene, coupled with audio from the Breakbot song "Baby I'm Yours," began to be widely used in various remixes on YouTube paired with clips of people being apprehended or caught off-guard in some fashion, often in the context of FBI operations or ligma jokes.

Origin

On December 13th, 2003, the United States conducted the successful Operation Red Dawn military operation, which led to the capture of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.^[1] The following morning, diplomat Paul Bremer, at the time the United States Administrator in Iraq, announced Saddam's capture at a Baghdad press conference, telling the crowd, "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him."^[2] On July 10th, 2010, a clip of the press conference was uploaded by the CSpanClassics YouTube channel, which received more than 1.57 million views and 3,600 comments over the next eight years.

Spread

On April 19th, 2018, YouTuber krazyspongebob13 uploaded a video featuring the press conference clip below a screenshot of a news headline about the deletion of the "Despacito" music video (shown below).

On August 4th, YouTuber LEGEND uploaded a green background template video featuring the Bremer clip paired with the audio from the Breakbot song "Baby I'm Yours", with the song loudly distorted at the end (shown below).

On July 23rd, 2018, YouTuber Dolan Darker uploaded a video entitled "PEWDIEPIE GOT LIGMA", in which PewDiePie asks about the meaning of the term Sugondese after which the Bremer clip is heard (shown below, left). The same day, another edit was uploaded, featuring Tyler "Ninja" Blevins inquiring about rumors of his death from ligma in an Instagram comment (shown below, right).

Other than its use in the context of people falling for ligma jokes, the clip has also been used in edits involving FBI or SWAT operations (examples shown below). Many of these edits are accompanied by additional footage of an SWAT raid from the 1:00 mark in the video "How to Smokebomb a Party".^[3]

Bremer's Response

On December 10th, 2018, The Daily Beast published a profile of the meme in which Paul Bremer was interviewed about his reaction to becoming a meme.^[4] Bremer revealed that he had learned about his meme status from his granddaughter and added that he was "not a meme guy, so I was watching them with great curiosity".^[4] The article also mentioned that he was taking "his new internet fame in stride".^[4]

Search Interest

External References