A mysterious Associated Press story tried to set the record straight about social media rumors that Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) once had coitus with a sofa.
Someone at the wire service fact-checked the claim and declared in a headline on Wednesday: “No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch.”
The oddly blunt headline was screen-captured by MeidasTouch co-founder Ben Meiselas and others, but was no longer on the AP’s site by Thursday morning.
A representative for the AP spoke to Semafor reporter Max Tani, who reports that the initial story “didn’t go through the wire service’s standard editing process,” and that the organization was “looking into” how the piece even got published.
The wild assertions originally sprang from people on X (formerly Twitter) claiming that Vance, now the running mate of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, wrote in his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” that he simulated the act with a rubber glove sandwiched between a set of couch cushions as a young man.
“You have only been a Senator for 18 months, you are NOT qualified to be @VP plus you depravely humped a couch and wrote about it in your book!” a supporter of Vice President Kamala Harris, who is poised to become the Democratic presidential nominee, wrote on X.
Even comedian Kathy Griffin chimed in, declaring the country should not have a “couchf*cker” as vice president.
At one point, the AP appeared to have another headline ― “Posts spread baseless rumors about GOP vice presidential pick JD Vance having sex with a couch” ― but all versions of the article were scrubbed from the internet less than 24 hours after publication.
Why waste all that journalistic effort? According to Mediate, the AP did a PDF search of the book that yielded 10 mentions of “couch” or “couches,” but none of them described Vance performing the act in question. The words “sofa” and “glove” did not appear anywhere in the memoir, AP wrote.
The Cut did its own investigation and reported that the pages supposedly recounting Vance’s alleged furniture tryst actually mention no such thing.
So there.