The swirling clouds of internet mayhem have parted, and the user behind the rumor that J.D. Vance once got sexual with a sectional has finally broken his silence.
In an interview with Business Insider, “Rick,” or @rickrudescalves (he’s since changed his username for privacy), explained why exactly he was inspired to invent a semi-believable lie that Donald Trump’s running mate had made love to a loveseat.
The day that Trump announced that Vance would be joining his ticket, Rick tweeted, “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).”
The story? A work of fiction by a disappointed guy from a working-class background. Rick, a desk worker who said he had a similar upbringing to that which Vance described in his bestselling book, Hillbilly Elegy, said he regarded the Ohio senator from “a place of irreverence if not outright disrespect.”
The page numbers? Plucked from thin air. Rick was referring to authors such as Jorge Luis Borges and John Fowles, who cooked up phony citations to lend literary credibility to their fictional works. “It’s something I’ve found funny my entire life,” Rick said.
Rick’s reasoning for this particular fabrication? He was inspired by Hunter S. Thompson’s anecdote in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 about former President Lyndon Johnson starting a rumor that his opponent had sex with his livestock.
“Christ, we can’t get away with calling him a pig-fucker,” the campaign manager protested. “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.”
“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.”
When the rumor took off, Rick was surprised and a little overwhelmed. He hid the post within a week, but by then, the idea had already spread like wildfire, with news organizations rushing to fact-check and then subsequently backing off.
Rick pointed to director Werner Herzog’s “ecstatic truth,” which Herzog describes as “a kind of truth that is the enemy of the merely factual.” During an interview on Late Night With Seth Meyers in 2022, Herzog admitted that in capturing his protagonist he “would invent a few things to make the essence of the man visible.”
By inventing a story about Vance having sex with a couch, this anonymous internet user had made the vice presidential nominee’s essence as a “couch-fucker” all the more visible.
For his part, Vance hasn’t exactly dodged the baseless rumors and appears to be making absolutely no effort to avoid the gaffe. At a rally on Tuesday, Vance made an awkward joke about getting in trouble with his wife, Usha, and being banished to the couch for the night.
This story has been updated.
