Dolphin Porn, Sex with a Couch, and Racist Mountain Dew: The Dam of JD Vance Jokes Has Broken

As Kamala Harris has a "Brat Summer," JD Vance is friendzoned by a futon

When I wrote Did JD Vance Have Sex with a Couch? I thought it would be a short-lived flash in the pan meme, ultimately receding to give way to an at-least-somewhat-serious campaign. But I was wrong. Not only did the couch memes intensify even after the hoax that JD Vance described having sex with a couch and a latex glove in Hillbilly Elegy was debunked—they were accompanied by other memes and jokes, some of which had a basis in reality.

We’ve established the origin of the couch jokes (also known as Hawk Tuah and Sit on that Thang), but what is going on with the dolphin thing?

Back in February of this year, Vance (not yet a VP candidate) tweeted that the “Internet was a mistake.” Like many right-wing grifters, Vance paired his moralistic tone with the actual content with which he supposedly took issue. You see this all the time with these people. They’ll post about a general phenomenon they think is bad (say, crime, for example- and hey, I agree crime is bad!) but they pair it with a disturbing clip of someone getting shot to “make a point.” The underlying secret is: they actually want to watch this crap, and they platform it so that other sickos can watch it too, under the guise of “raising awareness.” Like, “That court room description of sexual assault is awful, do you know where I can find the full transcript so I can educate myself?”

In Vance’s case, his example of Internet degeneracy was a woman getting “violated by a dolphin and enjoying it.” I can’t say what actually happens in the video because I sure as hell am not watching it, but it’s safe to say it’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t want in my search history.

Only problem is, on Twitter, when you search for something specifically, all the search results for that thing will include your keywords bolded. For example, this is what it looks like when I search “JD Vance” and “couch:”

So, in Vance’s case, he must have searched “dolphin” and “woman:”

Now, who knows…maybe he heard that a female artist created a really cool dolphin costume and he wanted to find that post. But more realistically, he deliberately searched “dolphin” and “woman” to find something weird. Perhaps he saw or heard about the clip and wanted to watch it, or maybe this has been a longstanding fetish that he regularly sought out. Nobody knows! All we know is, unlike Couchgate, this is something he actually did.

Speaking of other things Vance actually did, a propos of nothing, during a rally, he declared that the woke left was going to try and get him canceled for “racistly” drinking a Diet Mountain Dew. His underlying message, of course, was, “These people will call you racist for anything.” Unfortunately for him, the joke kind of fell flat (you know the secret sauce Trump has that makes him regrettably hilarious? JD Vance don’t got it!)

The dam is breaking. JD Vance is managing to look like a big weirdo (and not in the funny Trump way) in every piece of content he puts out. On July 26, he released this extremely bizarre fundraising video where he once again plugged Diet Mountain Dew for some reason, along with some other junk foods in a dim room that resembles either the creepy hotel in Twin Peaks, or a casting couch for a porno—perhaps a dolphin-laden one, and then asked people to donate to Trump. I know it sounds like I’m leaving out some context, but that’s exactly what the video was. You’re not missing anything.

What’s especially damning about Vance is that you can tell, somehow, that he has incredibly thin skin and can’t take a joke. Trump already has that reputation, but you get the sense that Trump might be able to take a joke about himself if done well enough (he has yet to slam current SNL Trump impersonator James Austin Johnson, who is simply too talented to rebuke.)

I’m not here to sing Trump’s praises, but the man knows how to work a room and find his light. It’s a big part of why people vote for him. Take, for example, his famous mug shot, or more recently, the fact that he had the stage presence to take advantage of an iconic photo op in the midst of an assassination attempt:

Say what you will about him, but he’s a reality show star. He knows how to entertain, and he manages to walk the line between being unintentionally funny and intentionally funny. His rallies and press conferences are raucous, meandering standup comedy specials, where he riffs on “flushing toilets 15 times” and starts chants demanding that venue workers “turn off the lights.” This isn’t to say he’s a good president, or a good person. But he’s watchable. He’s funny. He is pure “star power.”

JD Vance is none of those things. He’s never once come off as likable, interesting, or funny. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was part of his appeal to Trump. Let’s not forget that his predecessor was basically Evangelical Playmobil Grandpa. Trump needs to be the star, and his VP can never take up the limelight. I relate to this a bit; at one of my old jobs, I was put on the hiring team to hire for a peer in the same role as me, and I made sure to speak very highly of the people I suspected wouldn’t be abysmal hires but wouldn’t be competitive with me. Similarly, Trump would never pick a VP with too much personality, which is probably why he was clearly never going to pick Vivek Ramaswamy, who used the useless Republican primary debates to do his best nonstop Trump impression.

I actually thought Trump would likely try to appeal to moderate voters, especially suburban women, who he previously begged to “please like me” during a rally, by selecting either a woman VP, like Nikki Haley or Kristi Noem (RIP Cricket) or an establishment Republican with a relatively moderate reputation, at least by 2024 standards—a Marco Rubio for example. Instead, he chose JD Vance, who has not only gone on the record calling Trump “America’s Hitler” but who was also Twitter mutuals with “Bronze Age Loli Hitler Rape Groyper.”

In selecting a terminally online weirdo with no stage presence, Trump may have attempted to mobilize the far-right Thiel-fueled tech bros in Silicon Valley and the Loli Hitlers on 4Chan, but he inadvertently took a lot of the spotlight off himself and onto, well, things like this:

In the words of the infamous Anthony Scaramucci (Remember him, from Season 3?):

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