One of the manifold remarkable aspects of the 2024 US presidential race is how quickly the news cycle moves on. Just over two weeks ago, an assassination attempt was made on Donald Trump — an episode that was expected to dominate and “reshape” the race. And yet the sheer volume of election news since then has made this feel like a distant memory. Indeed, in the past week, the number of Americans looking up “Trump shooting” online has been eclipsed by the number putting another search term into Google: “JD Vance couch”.
The search relates to a rumour that Vance, Trump’s running mate, had confessed to having sex with a couch in the pages of his bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy — a rumour that, while utterly baseless, has been seized upon by meme makers. But while this is hard to blame on Vance, a series of misjudgments, blunders and a strong cringe factor are not. And those have combined to keep the senator from Ohio trending on social media for all the wrong reasons.
Vance has made several attempts, over the past week or so, to come across as a likeable kinda guy who can crack jokes and make people laugh — a guy like Trump, in other words. The problem is that he can’t seem to pull it off. Trump is naturally very funny; Vance is not. And somehow, despite the fact that the former was born into a life of privilege while Vance was born in an impoverished home to a drug-addict mother, it is Trump who manages to come across, to his supporters at least, as a man of the people.