JD Vance’s Mythical Couch Tryst is a fact-checker’s nightmare. Stephen Colbert explains why.
Are you confused and curious about all the memes and jokes about Donald Trumpvice presidential candidate of, JD Vance, carnal relations with a couch? Well, you are not alone. During his time Late show monologue on thursday, Stephen Colbert Decoding the online discussion surrounding Vance and his furniture fantasy.
Colbert criticized the Associated Press for bringing the Vance-couch conversation into the public domain through a fact-checking article titled “No, JD Vance Did Not Have Sex With a Couch.” Colbert explained that the rumor was spread by multiple social media accounts alleging that Vance described having sex with a couch in his book, The Elegy of the Mountain People. The internet has been abuzz with this bogus claim as more and more people have created memes and jokes about Vance’s supposed penchant for luxury furniture.
Late show The host chimed in, joking that Vance wasn’t the only politician accused of having sex with an inanimate object. He then played an edited clip of the President Bill Clinton saying, “I didn’t have sex with that Ottoman.” (The Ottomans are having a moment—a source recently told Vanity Fair that third party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, sonHis friends often joke: “It’s safe to say he’ll sleep on a stool.””) Colbert went on to add that Vance would never sleep on the couch because he is a devout conservative. “He knows it’s Adam and Eve, not Raymour & Flanigan,” Colbert said.
Joking aside, Colbert lamented how big a problem misinformation can be in the digital age. “Even a well-intentioned fact check can amplify a false narrative, so all of us—please—have a responsibility to stop the spread of malicious rumors like ‘JD Vance had sex with a couch,’” he said directly to the camera. “Because that’s simply not true, which is why we must reject the hashtag #CushionPushinJDVance.”
At the end of his monologue, Colbert highlighted a “disturbing twist” in the conversation between Vance and the couch: The AP had removed the fact-check. “This can only mean one of two things: Either the original story doesn’t meet AP’s rigorous standards,” he said, “or J.D. Vance had sex with a couch!” You be the judge.
It does not help the Republican Party with Buyer’s Remorse related to Vance.
