Vance is fighting against rubber glove and the polling hole.
Did Donald Trump do himself a favor by choosing Vance as his running mate? Past statements come back to haunt him, poll numbers are disastrous, and he's on the defensive.
"Fact Check: J.D. Vance Did Not Have Sex With a Couch," a U.S. news agency recently reported. Intriguing, isn't it? Why such a non-story about Donald Trump's vice-presidential candidate? Here's why: While Republicans were celebrating Vance at their convention a couple of weeks ago, a user claimed this. "Vance could be the first VP who admitted in a bestseller to having had sex with a deflated rubber glove trapped between two couch cushions," he wrote in a tweet, even providing a page reference.
Quite racy, but: The story is fabricated. It's supposed to have happened during his student days at the elite Yale University and be found in his memoir "Hillbilly Elegy." The agency checked the claim, found the word "couch" ten times in the book, but concluded soberly: "Furniture was not involved in the act." By then, the lie had already spread through social media, sparking a storm of memes. Examples? A photo of sofas in the Oval Office: "Can't let Vance near them." An upside-down couch on the stairs with only half an arm sticking out: "Vance, if she wants up." The vice-presidential candidate with his wife on a couch: "My favorite threesome."
The ridicule of Vance and this story, which has become campaign gossip in just a few days, is just one of the problems for Trump's VP. Since he triumphantly entered the Republican convention, some of his past statements have come back to haunt him online. If the same standards apply to Vance as to Trump, they should bounce off him. But for those he's supposed to attract, because Trump has problems with them - women, younger, undecided, and swing voters in battleground states - that's unlikely. Early polls suggest he's performing significantly worse among them than Trump's MAGA base. His favorability ratings have been in the basement since his nomination, with YouGov reporting the worst numbers for a VP since 1980.
Old Recordings Reemerge
Things haven't improved for him in recent days. For instance, a clip is circulating in which he doesn't consider domestic violence a reason for divorce or a barrier to a happy marriage. In a three-year-old clip, he sounds almost totalitarian, saying the lesson for conservatives from the past decade is to be "very ruthless" in their use of power. They've "lost every institution" except "maybe the churches." For change, "we must replace the entire ruling class with another." It sounds harsh, he admits, but he finds compromise impossible.
The director of the renowned polling institute at Monmouth University thinks Vance could harm Trump more than help him with his past and positions. "The top rule for a VP is, he shouldn't cause any damage," he told The Guardian. Vance, he says, emphasizes the negative aspects of Trump. The senator is a staunch abortion opponent who could potentially alienate rather than persuade women.
Perhaps, if you've seen the clip of Vance and conservative TV personality Tucker Carlson from 2021, it's been circulating. In it, he refers to Vice President Kamala Harris as one of the "childless cat ladies who are unhappy with their lives," leading the country and wanting to "make the rest of the country unhappy too." The "entire future of the Democrats" is being determined by people without children. Vance is also on the defensive, having to explain. The Democrats are anti-family, he recently defended, and by the way, he has nothing against cats. That's at least clumsy and certainly not an apology to women without children.
Fiction can still cause harm
Meanwhile, Harris, who has two stepchildren, is the Democratic nominee set to challenge Trump. In a social media video, "Couch Cats Against Trump" demonstrate driving in a column: "Cats for Kamala" is written on one of their signs. "Please save us" or "JD groped us" on others. "Join the Million Couch March" is written under the video. US President Joe Biden had labeled Trump as having the "morals of an alley cat" in the first TV debate, which can also mean: a person for sale with questionable principles.
Political scientist Natascha Strobl used these memes to point out how the US election campaign has changed. She wrote on the social network Bluesky: "It's very rare that you can fight the extreme right with their own weapons and it works." The weapon is: Make something up, spread it in any way until it becomes a real problem. Such claims have particularly kept Trump's base on edge; from alleged Biden corruption to reptiles in the government to a pedophilic political class of Democrats.
Young, credible, conservative: When Trump announced Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate, it was somewhat surprising. A bit cheeky and, due to his background, an authentic face of a new generation, marked by globalization's effects. One who had critically viewed Trump but, in light of the times, reconciled with him and is now on his side. Trump's base thinks Vance is a good choice. The others, whom the former president also needs for a victory in November, less so.
Despite the controversy surrounding old recordings and fabricated allegations, Vance continued to defend his stance on domestic violence and his comments about women. Connected to this, as Donald Trump's running mate, Vance found himself singing along to "♪ I'm not gonna let you go ♪" during a campaign event, a song that seemed to echo his determination to stay politically relevant despite the challenges facing him.
