Other late night hosts have had their fun with the J.D. Vance couch-sex rumors, but let’s be honest with ourselves: This bizarre, internet-fueled story always belonged to John Oliver. And in the latest episode of “Last Week Tonight,” the HBO host delivered.
In a now-deleted post that first appeared on July 15, a X user wrote that Vance will be “the first vp pick to have admitted in a ny times bestseller to f–king an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions [sic].” Though the post was a joke and Vance never wrote about having sex with any sort of furniture in “Hillbilly Elegy,” the rumor quickly took on a life of its own.
“I think the reason it spread so fast is that A) nobody read that f–king book and B) it was incredibly easy to believe because if you asked me to draw a man who f–ks his couch, 10 times out of 10, I’m drawing this guy,” Oliver said on Sunday night. Thus began the HBO’s host couch-based roast of Vance. For nearly two minutes straight, Oliver mocked Donald Trump’s VP pick.
“If you asked me to play two truths and a lie with this man, before he even opened his mouth I shout, ‘The truth is he f–ks his couch!’ I’ve never seen someone with more couch f–ker energy,” Oliver said. “He looks like he watched the Tom Cruise and Oprah interview and was jealous of Tom’s shoes. If you told me his first celebrity crush was the plastic covered sofa in ‘Everybody Loves Raymond,’ I would believe you without question. If you told me that the reason you find coins in couch cushions is because JD Vance always leaves a tip, I’d be like, ‘Yeah that sounds right.’ That rumor was so widespread that it yielded the actual Norwegian headline, ‘Hadde ikke sex med sofa,’ which looks like a sign that they had to put up in Ikea after JD visited too much.”
The HBO host then dove into the AP story about the rumor. Last Wednesday, the Associated Press, still considered one of the most trustworthy and unbiased news sources, published a story debunking the rumor with the headline, “No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch.” That story was then taken down because it “didn’t go through our standard editing process. We are looking into how that happened,” the publication told Mediaite.
Oliver pointed to his own experiences with fact checking “Last Week Tonight” to explain why the article was likely taken down.
“You cannot say that JD Vance didn’t have sex with a couch definitively. You can say he didn’t write about doing that in his book because that is provable. But that’s not the same as asserting he never f–ked a couch, especially because he hasn’t officially denied it,” Oliver said.
True to form, Oliver then took his own personal investigation one step further. “Last Week Tonight” contacted the Vance campaign to get to the bottom of this story.
“They — and this is true — hung up on us, which is — and this is critical — not a no, is it?” Oliver said. “We then followed up by both texting and emailing the same question again as well as asking, ‘Has he had sex with any other furniture or household items?’ But as of taping, we sadly haven’t heard back.”
