After years of condemning former President Donald Trump for spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories, Democrats are now poking fun at his running mate using a false and vulgar rumor.
The rumor, first posted on X last month, concerns a fake passage about a sex act and a couch allegedly found in Sen. JD Vance’s 2016 book “Hillbilly Elegy.”
The lie spread like wildfire, spawning jokes and memes even after the original joke’s author clarified that it wasn’t real and later made his account private. Several news outlets published fact-checks of the claim.
The excitement reached a fever pitch in Philadelphia the day Vice President Kamala Harris named Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz told an arena packed with thousands of enthusiastic supporters: “I’ve got to tell you, I can’t wait to debate [Vance]. That’s if – if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”
As the crowd roared and Harris grinned behind him, Walz, who had started a trend of calling Republicans “weird” a few weeks earlier, joked: “See what I did there?”
The Harris campaign’s TikTok account, Kamala HQ, posted a video of the moment that has been viewed more than 5.3 million times.
Republicans online were quick to reprimand Walz for referring to the false story.
Jonathan Turley, a conservative legal scholar, attacked the “bank story” on X, calling it “repeatedly debunked.”
“We’re not even in the post-Congress period yet and our major candidates are already ‘rolling in the mud’ with trolls,” he wrote.
The content and rapid spread of false rumors seem tailor-made for the age of social media, where information that is real, false, and sometimes a combination of both, is presented and disseminated in similar ways. Fact-checking often doesn’t have the same reach as bad information.
The incident has also led to rival political camps arguing over which bits of false information are worse and the blurred lines between what is harmful and what is simply mockery.
Walz wasn’t the first to poke fun at the viral falsehood. On July 27, nearly two weeks after the original false tweet was posted and a week after it was hidden by its author, the Harris campaign account posted a screenshot on X of a 2021 tweet from Vance mocking “cat ladies.”
The post was captioned: “JD Vance makes no secret of his hatred of women.”
On July 26, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out a press release criticizing Vance. The opening line read: “House Republicans are bundling their public praise of Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee with private criticism.”
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, who was at the time considered a candidate for Harris’ running mate, made the joke clear two more times in the following days.
On the July 28 episode of ABC News’ “This Week,” Pritzker blasted Trump, saying, “He talks about all kinds of crazy stuff,” before adding, “You know, his running mate, as you’ve probably heard, is known for his obsession with banks.”
During the “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom fundraiser on July 29, Pritzker told attendees, “I’ll keep my remarks brief. I know we have a lot of speakers. And then, of course, there’s another Zoom meeting that I invite you all to, called ‘Couches Against Trump.’”
After Walz’s speech, some Democrats continued to embrace the joke.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) quoted a tweet from Vance criticizing Harris for not answering media questions. Moskowitz told him, “I’ve been in the Air Force 2 JD, there’s a great bench on it.”
And at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday, Congresswoman Dina Titus, speaking for Walz and Harris, addressed Vance with the phrase, “You better hide behind that couch, because we’re coming to get you.”
When asked for a statement about Titus’ comments, a spokesperson responded, “I think we just have to go with what’s on the tape.”
Now that the jokes have gone mainstream, Republicans have criticized Democrats for helping to spread the lie. Meanwhile, Trump and his allies continue to spread lies about Harris and Walz.
Democrats defend their jokes as harmless fun, pointing to damaging conspiracy theories Trump and other Republicans have spread in the past about Democrats running secret sex trafficking rings, being pedophiles, or changing their identities for political gain. These conspiracy theories are far worse than a meme about a bank.
“For 2 years we were told Joe Biden was an international super criminal mastermind from Despicable Me 3. You will be listening to a bank story,” Moskowitz tweeted last week in response to Turley’s complaints.
Representatives for the Trump and Harris campaigns, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Pritzker and Moskowitz did not respond to requests for comment.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
