Donald Trumps Bing Bong Speech

2015viral videoclassic

Donald Trump's Bing Bong Speech is a soundbite from an August 2015 campaign stop in Birch Run, Michigan, where Trump used the nonsense phrase 'bing bing, bong bong' to mock how lobbyists influence politicians. The clip became a viral audio staple for autotuned Vine and YouTube remixes throughout the 2016 primary season.

Overview

Donald Trump's Bing Bong Speech refers to a short stretch of a 2015 campaign speech where Trump used the mouth noises 'bing bing, bong bong, bing bing bing' to imitate the back-and-forth between politicians and their donors1. He paired the sounds with jerky hand gestures meant to look like a puppeteer working strings, which is a big part of why the clip travels so well as silent Vine loops and reaction GIFs3.

The bit is barely a sentence long, but it hits the sweet spot of political speech gone completely off-script. Bloggers latched onto it as evidence Trump was 'speaking gibberish' on stage2, while remix accounts treated the syllables as free percussion. The soundbite is one of the earliest Trump-as-remix-material moments, predating the flood of 2016 primary edits5.

How It Spread

Within roughly 72 hours the Vine bounced through political blogs and aggregators. Gawker ran a post declaring Trump had 'gone completely bing-bong'1, Death and Taxes transcribed the moment in its headline3, and Someecards framed the clip as making Trump's whole campaign 'worth it'2. Oregon Live called the resulting meme 'everything,' pointing to how quickly the audio was being looped and captioned4.

On August 13th, 2015, YouTube musician Jonathan Mann uploaded an autotuned mashup that spliced Trump's 'bing bing, bong bong' with footage of the Crazy Frog Brothers, one of the first musical remixes built on the soundbite5. More song edits trickled out through October 2015 as the primary season heated up.

Coverage of the remix wave itself did not arrive until early March 2016, when BuzzFeed rounded up the best examples in a listicle titled '19 Donald Trump Vines That Prove He Might Secretly Be A Musical Genius'6. By then the 'bing bong' clip was a fixed piece of the Trump-Vine canon, sitting alongside other clipped-from-rally soundbites.

How to Use This Meme

Editors typically loop the two-second 'bing bing, bong bong' audio over an unrelated video, sync it to a beat, or autotune it into a melody. A common convention is to pair the sound with cartoonish puppet or marionette footage as a callback to Trump's original hand gestures. It often shows up as a punchline reply when someone is accused of talking nonsense or dodging a real answer.

Frequently Asked Questions