Kamala Harris Campaign and Top Democrat Embrace Gross JD Vance Disinformation

The campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris and a top Democratic ally have recently embraced a deliberate bit of disinformation that has been propagated online about Republican VP nominee JD Vance in the form a gross “joke” that became a rumor.

The nasty story has been circulating on the far left and some media websites, stemming from a parody post on X/Twitter that included a follow-up tweet to demonstrate it was made-up, with the easily disprovable claim that Vance had committed a gross sex act and written about it in his book.

Progressives and Democrats on X nevertheless made a game of spreading the rumor as much as possible, never indicating it was entirely fabricated and easily disprovable, in order to make a mockery of Vance. Something that has also been deliberately done to other politicians in the past via online viral content.

Eventually the Associated Press brought even more attention to the lie with a fact-check that was then removed later with a note saying it “didn’t go through our standard editing process.”

Even so, Late Show host Stephen Colbert and others used the pretense of comedy to continue to spread the demonstrably false allegation.

After all of that, the Harris campaign account on Sunday referenced the false claim as a premise in a post on X while quoting his mean tweet about “cat ladies.” The insult refers to comments Vance made in 2021 where he claimed the Democratic party was ruled by “childless lonely cat ladies” such as Harris.

“JD Vance does not couch his hatred for women,” The Harris campaign tweeted.

JD Vance does not couch his hatred for women pic.twitter.com/sGfZBpT5YF

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) July 28, 2024

Moreover, Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a possible contender to be Harris’s running mate, also dug at Vance over the false allegation, calling him “weird” and saying he has an “obsession with couches” in an interview on ABC’s This Week – eliciting no objection from the host.

“You know, his running mate, as you probably have heard, is, you know, getting known for his obsession with couches, and somebody who is hiding his views on a woman’s right to choose,” he said in ABC News interview.

He added, “And then, just broadly, the attack on people who are childless and saying that we ought to raise taxes on childless people and calling them cat ladies — I think he apologized to cats, but he hasn’t apologized to women.”

Host Martha Raddatz did not object, but did seem to be stifling laughter as she moved on to the next question.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also used the same word, “weird” on Sunday during an interview when he called on Trump to remove Vance. A remark the Harris campaign likewise amplified in a post on X.

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