There are things that can be fact-checked: The sky is often blue—correct. The summer solstice takes place each year on either June 20, 21, or 22—also correct. But some things can’t be fact-checked, mostly because as human beings, we lead interior lives and no one—certainly not the Associated Press—is with us 24/7. That brings us to this week, and the curious case of a Wednesday AP story headlined, “No, J.D. Vance did not have sex with a couch.” By Thursday morning, the story was gone. In the days since Ohio senator J.D. Vance joined the GOP ticket as Donald Trump’s running mate, the rollout has been anything but smooth. The biggest headlines about the Hillbilly Elegy author and former (?) emo, 2000s blogger include his vast unpopularity (he’s facing record-low approval ratings among VP nominees post-RNC), the resurfacing of his 2021 pitch that childless people should lose their voting rights, and now, couchgate—the latest viral political meme that suggests Vance, at one point in his youth, had sex with a couch. Did J.D. Vance have sex with a couch? I’ll answer that with another question: How can you or I or anyone but Vance really know? At a certain point, especially in politics, the truth becomes immaterial—if people are talking about it (in this case, whether you've fucked a sofa), you're losing. But let me back up. A spokesperson for the AP tells me this story didn’t go through the wire service’s standard editing process, and the AP is looking into how it was published. The spokesperson also emphasizes that the piece did not go out on the wire to AP customers. https://t.co/Rk4TbnYYSB — Max Tani (@maxwelltani) July 25, 2024 Couchgate started shortly after Vance was announced as Trump’s VP on July 15, and Twitter began sharing especially weird or illuminating snippets from Vance’s memoir. Some were real, others were fake, but given Vance’s reputation as something of a, uh, quirky (derogatory) guy, most were taken at face value. So, when now-private Twitter user @rickrudescalves wrote, “can’t say for sure but he might be the first vp pick to have admitted in a ny times bestseller to fucking an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions (vance, hillbilly elegy, pp. 179-181),” plenty of Twitter users were happy to run with this narrative. This week, it reentered the discourse in a major way, spawning bizarre TikTok edits of Vance appearing to lust for bodacious loveseats—all set to Kendrick Lamar’s universal diss track for sex deviants, “Not Like Us.” Other Twitter users have cautioned that Vance should be kept as far from the White House as possible, pointing to photos of its numerous, plush sofas. Some have juxtaposed Vance's, err, time in the sofa with potential Democratic vice presidential pick Mark Kelly’s time in space. A lot is happening! we cannot let JD Vance near the oval office pic.twitter.com/aKEAnaoLBB — Amy A (@lolennui) July 24, 2024 do we think this is her? legit starstruck right now pic.twitter.com/4tb38idIzu — Mike Scollins (@mikescollins) July 25, 2024 By Wednesday, the AP, Snopes, and even the Cut issued denials with bold headlines to the tune of “J.D. Vance Did Not Have Sex With a Couch.” These articles (especially the AP's, which is now offline) then drew their own media coverage—it’s not every day you have the AP investigating whether a politician who could soon be a heartbeat away from the presidency fucked sofa cushions. If I’m putting on my journalist hat for a second, obviously, the AP and these other outlets are fact-checking whether the couch-fucking anecdote actually appears in Hillbilly Elegy. Indeed, that can be fact-checked: It’s not in…
