The embarrassing, baseless gossip that Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance had sex with a couch was alluded to in passing on Fox News Friday night for the first time, making for a bit of an amusing—if not awkward—moment on the right-wing channel.
Vance’s rollout as Donald Trump’s running mate has been largely viewed as less than ideal, thanks in part to his controversial comments about women and voting. In addition, scores of memes have imagined Vance’s relationship with furniture, as a result of a joke post on X from July 15 which claimed to quote Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, but was simply made up. Since the post gained traction, the Associated Press fact-checked it as false on Wednesday, but, to compound the issue for Vance, removed the fact check soon after, saying it “didn’t go through our standard editing process.”
The result: widespread questions—and even more jokes, including from late-night hosts like Stephen Colbert—about what really happened.
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On Fox News’ The Five, the show’s liberal co-host, Jessica Tarlov, made a clear nod to the story while discussing Vice President Kamala Harris’ jumpstart campaign, which has set records for donations and campaign volunteer sign-ups.
“Well, Kennedy,” she told her colleague, “it seems like Republicans are getting a big J.D. Vance—should I say, couch-sized—wake-up call.”
“Did he or didn’t he?” Tarlov wondered moments later, adding that she would think that Vance would prefer “more policing of content” on X due to the flood of memes.
Kennedy chimed in. “Let’s couch that part of the discussion and get on to—,” she joked, before the conversation moved on.
Tarlov’s initial comments marked the first time that the discourse about Vance and couches was mentioned on Fox News, according to a transcript search with media monitoring tool Grabien. By contrast, the subject was first broached on MSNBC two nights before on Alex Wagner Tonight, with two more mentions Friday morning. And on The Source Thursday night, Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) made the first such reference on CNN.
As for whether or not Republicans are getting a “wake-up call,” a Fox News poll released later Friday and covered by Special Report anchor Bret Baier showed a closer race between Harris and Trump in some battleground states than previous polls featuring Joe Biden had indicated.
