Andy Beshear — Kentucky's two-term Democratic governor under consideration to be Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate — recently suggested Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) was an impostor Appalachian due to his preference for drinking Diet Mountain Dew.
The Ohio senator, who is former President Donald Trump's running mate, recently suggested at a campaign rally that he would be called racist for drinking Diet Mountain Dew.
The joke was notably met with silence from the crowd of supporters, and inspired a viral tweet from X user @nickmoscato. The tweet, which has accumulated more than two million views since Monday, showed a screenshot from the 2009 film "Inglourious Basterds" in which an undercover British spy's identity is revealed when he holds up the wrong three fingers when ordering drinks in front of a Gestapo officer.
"Guy says he's from Appalachia and then talked about drinking DIET Mountain Dew," he tweeted.
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During a recent press conference in Frankfort (Kentucky's capital city), Beshear displayed a bottle of Vance's favorite soda on the lectern, and apologized to the makers of the beverage for any damage to their brand.
He made sure to mention that Ale-8-One, which is manufactured in Winchester, Kentucky, is "definitely the soft drink of Kentucky."
"But I don't believe the government should be making your decisions! So if you enjoy Diet Mountain Dew, uh, you do you." Beshear said. "And to Diet Mountain Dew, uh, very sorry. Didn't mean to say negative things about you. Just remember, I am from here, just like everybody else that's speaking out. Thank y'all very much."
The Kentucky governor's "I am from here" comment is likely a reference to the "He Ain't From Here" meme he initiated in which he cast doubt on Vance's Appalachian credentials.
The Ohio senator first rose to fame by writing his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, about his time growing up in a low-income suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. Beshear's comments inspired a trend in which social media users from across Appalachia used the hashtag #HeAintFromHere — which trended nationally on Thursday — to claim Vance had no knowledge about commonplace Appalachian idiosyncrasies.
One example is a tweet from Kentucky teachers' union organizer Nema Brewer, who tweeted: "J.D. Vance washes his cast iron skillet" (cast iron skillets are meant to be wiped clean and not washed in order to preserve the seasoning). Kentucky teacher Emilie McKiernan tweeted that Vance's "favorite bourbon is Jack Daniel's," which is made in Tennessee (bourbon whiskey is exclusively made in Kentucky). And another user tweeted: "JD Vance's Country Crock buckets are full of margarine," in reference to Appalachian households typically using the margarine containers for general storage purposes.
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Beshear's status as a VP contender has prompted significant interest in the Kentucky governor from national media outlets. During one recent press conference, Beshear declined to take a position on the Israel-Gaza war when reporters asked him, only saying that the United States was a "strong ally" of Israel.
"When you have disagreements with a strong ally, I think you have them privately and I don't think you can litigate foreign policy through the press," he said.
Despite Kentucky's status as a ruby-red state that has voted for Republican presidential candidates in the last six consecutive presidential elections, it has elected Democratic governors in every quadrennial cycle since 1975, with the exceptions of 2003 and 2015, when voters in the commonwealth elected Republicans Ernie Fletcher and Matt Bevin, respectively. Both lost their bids for a second term in office to Steve Beshear (Andy's father) in 2007, and Andy Beshear in 2019. The Kentucky governor's race has also been viewed as a bellwether for presidential elections, as the party that won the Kentucky governor's mansion in the year before the presidential election went on to capture the White House in every election since 2003.
Watch the video of Beshear's comments by clicking this link.
