The deputies of the scandal-plagued Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are probably the last public employees I’d pick to spread international goodwill.
Yet that’s exactly what happened Thursday morning with the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program. The decades-old initiative seeks to spread democracy by bringing in people from across the globe to learn from American institutions and officials.
Photos on social media posted by the sheriff’s Community Partnerships Bureau showed employees chatting with a delegation from various African countries, as kids from the local Youth Activity League listened. The topic at hand, per the bureau: “Dissuading radicalization.”
At the same time, President Biden was in L.A. for the Summit of the Americas. Federal authorities enacted a no-fly zone until 10 p.m., limiting even law enforcement agencies from using helicopters without permission.
A memo describing the no-fly rules went to Sheriff’s Department patrol units and station dispatch centers in the afternoon. Sources told me that someone then tacked on a new ending, “Go Brandon Go Brandon Go Brandon!!!!!!!!!” — a weak-salsa insult that conservatives use as a stand-in vulgarity against Biden — and passed along the altered message to other deputies.
I tweeted a photo of it, and it quickly went viral. Hours later, the Sheriff’s Department Twitter account chimed in: The last line was a “hoax.”
While denying my initial assertion that the doctored “Go Brandon...
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