JD Vance campaign fails to deny that viral drag photo is of him
An alleged image of JD Vance has appeared in drag (Adam Bettcher/Getty Images)
The Trump-Vance campaign team has failed to deny that a photograph that appears to show JD Vance in drag during his university days is indeed of him.
The photograph, which recently appeared on social media at the weekend and quickly went viral, appears to show Donald Trump’s Republican running mate dressed in a skirt and wearing a blonde wig and sporting thick black eye-liner. The picture was reportedly taken at a party at Ivy League university Yale in 2012.
Despite the likeness, there has been no confirmation that the man in the photo is actually Vance. However, The Daily Beast reported that there was no denial or further comment from the Trump-Vance campaign when approached.
Yale School of Medicine pediatrics expert Travis Whitfill, the source of the photograph which was shared with makeup artist Matt Bernstein, who then posted it on X/Twitter, told The Daily Beast the image is “from a group chat of Vance’s fellow classmates and is from a friend of a friend… and was taken at a Halloween party”.
Whitfill went on to say he did not know Vance personally but “from all the sources I’ve heard, JD was actually a good guy in law school. Not sure what happened after though.”
The photograph has done the rounds on social media, with people making memes and branding the Ohio senator a hypocrite, given his anti-LGBTQ+ stance. Vance has labelled anyone opposing bills aimed at limit gender-affirming care a “groomer”.
The groomer slur is often weaponised by the conservatives to smear drag queens and the LGBTQ+ community by comparing them to paedophiles.
“I’ll stop calling people groomers when they stop freaking out about bills that prevent the sexualisation of my children,” he wrote on X in 2022.
He went on to tell the then Fox News host Tucker Carlson: “If you don’t want to be called a groomer, don’t sexualise six and seven-year-old children… this is about parental rights. What kind of a country do we want to live in? Where families control what values their children grow up in or where Joe Biden and the pharmaceutical companies do that?”
Reacting to the online photo, one person on X: “Oh man, they’re [Republicans] going to hate this. We’ve really been blessed this past month.”
Another joked: “The woke mind virus claims another victim…” referring to a bizarre phrase Elon Musk has taken to using.
And a third said: “There’s no community note,” followed by a tongue-in-cheek crying emoji.
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