The memes and mockery of J.D. Vance’s first week as the Republican nominee for vice president came to a crescendo on Last Week Tonight on Sunday, with John Oliver boasting that his staff reached out to Vance’s campaign asking for an official comment on the biggest joke of all: “Has Sen. Vance ever had sex with a couch?”
Oliver giddily explained that the Associated Press had to retract its own fact-check for failing to go through the AP’s standard editing process. “No shit, it didn’t!” Oliver said. “There’s an obvious problem with that original headline [“No, J.D. Vance did not have sex with a couch.”]. And the reason I know that is we care a lot about facts and precise phrasing on this show. So I can tell you, you can’t say J.D. Vance didn’t have sex with a couch definitively. You can say that he didn’t write about doing that in his book, because that is provable. But that’s not the same as asserting he never fucked a couch. Especially because he hasn’t officially denied it.”
So Oliver’s staff sought an official denial. And didn’t receive one.
ADVERTISEMENT
To wit: “We wanted to give him the opportunity to do that, so we contacted the Vance campaign this week, calling one of their spokespeople. And when we asked, and I quote: ‘Has Sen. Vance ever had sex with a couch?’ They, and this is true, hung up on us. Which is, and this is critical, not a no, is it?”
“We then followed by both texting and emailing the same question again, as well as asking if he’d had sex with any other furniture or household items,” Oliver added. “But as of taping we sadly haven’t heard back.”
Vance has already dragged down the Republican ticket led by former President Donald Trump for the past week, with Oliver noting Vance’s historic lack of a popularity bump since the Republican National Convention.
Oliver said it doesn’t help that Vance doesn’t know how to deliver a stump speech. “The vibe there is less running for vice president, and more shitting the bed at an open mic night,” Oliver said. “That makes Jeb’s ‘Please clap’ look like Showtime At The Apollo.”
And when voters do pay attention, they’re “not liking what they’re seeing,” as Oliver noted Vance agrees with Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, supports a national abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest, and bizarrely believes “childless cat ladies” are making everyone else miserable.
“As for the claim that women who don’t have children are miserable with the choices they’ve made, the only person I’m sure who’s miserable with the choice they’ve made right now is Donald Trump after choosing Great Lakes Ron DeSantis here as a running mate,” Oliver said.
And as for the couch memes, Oliver cited a tweet from July 15 that suggested Vance had sex with an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions, and referenced pages 179-181 of Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, as the source.
“Let me be clear. That is not true. It is not in his book,” Oliver said. “But I think the reason is spread so fast might be that a) nobody read that fucking book, and b) it was incredibly easy to believe.”
He then let fly with several zingers at Vance’s expense:
- “Because if you asked me to draw a man that fucks his couch, 1 times out of 10, I’m drawing this guy.
- “If you asked me to play Two Truths and A Lie with this guy, before he even opened his mouth, I’d shout, ‘The truth is he fucks his couch!’
- "Because I’ve never seen someone with more couch-fucker energy. He looks like he watched the Tom Cruise Oprah interview and was jealous of Tom’s shoes.
- “If you told me his first celebrity crush was with the plastic sofa from Everybody Loves Raymond, I’d believe you without question.
- “If you told me the reason you find coins in between couch cushions was because JD Vance always leaves a tip, I’d be like, ‘Yeah. That sounds right!’”
Oliver later conceded that so much more could and will happen between now and the election in November, so it’d be impossible for him to predict the outcome. But for now, Oliver said he knows two things for certain: “1) Jake Tapper is not brat, and until he tells us otherwise I’m going to assume that J.D. Vance fucked a couch.”
