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Buttigieg's "'J' Stood for Joint" refers to a line said by Mayor Pete Buttigieg during the seventh Democratic Presidential Primary debate in Des Moines, Iowa. The statement, referring to the "J" in JCPOA, was mocked on Twitter and led to many Twitter users mentioning the line out of context and applying it to the subject of marijuana.

Origin

On January 14th, 2020, The Washington Examiner shared a clip of Buttigieg answering the question "Would you promise that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, as Trump did?" during the debate on Twitter (shown below). Buttigieg responds by saying, "In order to get that done, we've got to work with our partners. The Iran nuclear deal, the technical term for it was the JCPOA. That first letter 'J' stood for 'Joint.' We can't do this alone, even less so now after everything that has happened."

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On January 14th, 2020, Twitter user @HalSinger,^[1] tweeted a transcript of the response with the caption, "'J stood for Joint' is the most memorable line of the debate heh heh (also C stood for cannabis and P stood for pot)" (shown below, left). Many Twitter users referred to this line when criticizing his performance. For example, that night, Twitter user @ElieNYC^[2] tweeted, "Pete just told us that the 'J' in an acronym stands for 'joint' and SURELY people are noticing that he's saying nothing of substance, right? RIGHT? [checks Twitter] Goddamn it." (show below, right). The tweet gained over 600 likes in a day.

On January 14th, Twitter user @lanrek tweeted, "ok the only thing i just heard from mayo pete was when he said 'j stands for joint' #DemDebate" with the picture of Elon Musk smoking weed (shown below). The next day, The Daily Dot^[4] published the article "Buttigieg’s ‘The J stood for joint’ remark unites stoners online."

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