You may have seen the media abuzz yesterday about a presidential candidate named Deez Nuts, an Independent from Iowa, polling at 9 percent in North Carolina.
[journalism quickly industrializes to mass-produce "Deez Nuts" presidential campaign stories]
— Matt Pearce 🦅 (@mattdpearce) August 19, 2015
As Matt Pearce, of the Los Angeles Times, predicted on Twitter, the journalism industrial complex hopped on the Deez Nuts bandwagon. For evidence, I give a smattering of stories from various media outlets about the "candidate" that you may read at your leisure here:
"Presidential Sensation Deez Nuts Does Not Exist" — The Daily Beast
"Poll: North Carolina Voters Largely Unsure About Deez Nuts" — Gawker
"Trump beware: political apprentice Deez Nuts is top-polling independent" — The Guardian
"Meet 'Deez Nuts,' the Teen Presidential Candidate Punking America" — Rolling Stone
Reporters from The New York Times appear to be staying above the fray based on searching their website:
But, who or what is "Deez Nuts" and how and why do we know that they are apparently running for President of the United States?
What is "Deez Nuts" is best answered by the Internet itself. I direct you to the Urban Dictionary page — most entries are from the 2000s and many attribute the phrase to Dr. Dre's "Deeez Nuuuts" from his seminal 1992 album The Chronic.
Who is "Deez Nuts?" is a slightly more nuanced question. From the Federal Election Commission filing form for "Deez Nuts for President 2016," we learn that the candidate is a resident of Wallingford, Iowa.
The Guardian reports that the "Deez Nuts" in question is 15-year-old Wallingford resident Brady Olson. They verified his identity by seeing his passport.
Rolling Stone contacted Olson, a.k.a. Mr. Nuts, by emailing the email address listed on his filing report and did a Q&A. It is in the Q&A that we find the answer for why he decided to run for president — he did not want to see Bush, Clinton or Trump in the White House so he threw his hat in the ring.
He also addresses how ridiculously easy it is to officially file that you would like to run for president — the form does not even require your age, which if you'll recall Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution:
"No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States."
So, as a 15-year-old, Olson is still 20 years out from being eligible for election to the highest office in the land.
This media hullabaloo all came about because Deez Nuts was put into a poll by Public Policy Polling in which he polled at 9 percent in North Carolina when put against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
His candidacy however, seems to have confused most of those polled:
Confusing candidacy or not, let's all admit that this Iowan punk'd America better than Ashton Kutcher ever could.
