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The "JD Vance shtupped a couch" story that's been circulating on social media for the past few weeks is not a harmless joke. It's a power move.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about, good. Read no further.
But if you're curious, on July 15, X user @rickrudescalves posted, "can't say for sure but he might be the first vp pick to have admitted in a ny times bestseller to f***ing an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions."
I've long been a fan of Vance, but at first I thought it was a pretty funny joke—the sort of thing one might include in an overly confessional coming-of-age memoir (though in the actual book, Vance thankfully spares us the details of his sexual awakening). It reminded me of the fake "Gorilla channel" excerpt that circulated in 2018. According to that faux passage from some White House tell-all, then-President Trump demanded that his aides splice together footage of gorillas fighting so he could spend hours sitting six inches from the screen and egging them on. The gag trended on Twitter for a few days and then faded away. Nobody believed it. Nobody tried to pass it off as true. And no elected Democrats tried to turn it into a genuine line of attack.
But it's clear by now that the couch story is different.
On Tuesday, newly minted vice presidential nominee Tim Walz said he was ready to debate Vance as long as the Ohio senator was willing to "get off the couch." And in case anyone missed the allusion, he added, "See what I did there?" The next day, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) took it even further, writing "I've been on Air Force 2 JD, there is a great couch on it" in response to a video of Vance approaching reporters next to the vice presidential plane.
The tiny percentage of X users who generate most of the site's content may be aware that it's a joke, but the hundreds of thousands of normies watching the couch joke enter the mainstream conversation likely have no idea. Nobody's polled the general public yet to see what share of the electorate thinks Vance actually confessed to getting down and dirty with a sectional, but I imagine it's a non-negligible percentage that will only grow—especially if prominent Democrats keep saying he did.
The story takes five seconds to disprove. The original post even provided a page number. But the obvious falsity is part of the flex: They're telling us that they can invent something out of whole cloth and then make it true by getting enough people to repeat it enough times.
This is a whole new playbook: Tell a lie, admit that your "evidence" was fabricated, then keep spreading it anyway.
Have Republicans spread their fair share of outlandish claims, from internet trolls to the Oval Office? Sure. Liberals will happily provide you with a list: Q-Anon, Pizzagate, birtherism, Ted Cruz's dad shooting JFK, "Big Mike," the stolen 2020 election, Democrats supporting post-birth abortion (although that one's true). But Republicans who say these things believe them—and they're not anywhere near as easily falsifiable as the couch story.
That doesn't make what the Democrats are doing better—it makes it worse.
The people who repeat the couch story—including Walz—know that it started as a joke and isn't true. They just want to associate an off-putting story with their political opponent in the minds of as many people as possible.
If you try to dispute the false rumor, then it's "weird" or "suspicious" that you had to deny it. The more you object, the harder they laugh. The point is to make you feel powerless and accept their lies as your new reality.
It's a tactic befitting both a totalitarian propaganda machine and a clique of particularly insidious high school mean girls.
The Harris campaign is increasingly built on these bullying tactics, which is ironic given that Democrats consider themselves a coalition of outcast GSA members and theater nerds revolting against the popular Chads and Staceys.
Their message to their favored identity groups is to live authentically, be yourself, and don't let anyone make you feel "other;" their message to anyone who rejects their ideology is that you should hate yourself because everything you do is weird and gross.
In 2016, Trump's leaked "grab 'em by the pussy" comment provoked a visceral hatred among women who had endured such crass treatment from men. I expect thousands of voters who were bullied in high school will have a similar reaction to Harris.
Trump, of course, has also engaged in his fair share of bullying. But we're dealing with two different kinds of bullying here. Trump calls people names (though I'd differentiate between substantive attacks like "Crooked Hillary" and schoolyard taunts like "Rob DeSanctus" and "Kamabla"). Sometimes he repeats nasty rumors. But to invent a rumor that you know to be false and then spread it to discredit and demoralize your enemy is far more insidious. It's the difference between the jock shoving you in a locker and the Regina George queen bee psychologically tormenting you until you develop an eating disorder.
I'm not here to call for a return to civility in politics. That ship has sailed. I'm merely pointing out that the couch story represents a new low of post-truth cynicism and petty cruelty. Ask yourself if you'd want to live under a regime that employs such tactics.
Grayson Quay is a former editor at the Daily Caller and the author of a forthcoming book on transhumanism.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
