J.D. Vance might be sick of all of the couch-cuddling comedy coming his means. However sadly for the Republican VP candidate, the plenty can’t get sufficient of the (false) web rumor that he wrote about having intercourse along with his sofa in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. Final week Stephen Colbert took cracks on the (alleged) couch-loving king; on Sunday, John Oliver chimed in with a ton of couch-related jokes on his Emmy-winning late-night program, Final Week Tonight.
To recap: The Vance sofa jokes started with a shitpost from the since-deleted X account @ricksrudescalves. “Can’t say for certain however he may be the primary vp decide to have admitted in a ny occasions bestseller to fucking an inside-out latex glove shoved between two sofa cushions,” read the viral missive, which Oliver shared on his program. The unique publish even included a pretend quotation for the fictional story: “(vance, 𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘺, pp. 179-181).” It’s all within the particulars.
Regardless of clearly being a joke—and that includes a declare simply debunked by thumbing a duplicate of Hillbilly Elegy—the publish gained traction on-line. On Sunday, Oliver shared some theories as to why. “I believe the rationale it unfold so quick may be {that a}) no one learn that fucking ebook, and b) it was extremely straightforward to consider,” he mentioned. Then the comic let it rip, completely roasting Vance and his seemingly upholstery-loving face. “For those who ask me to attract a person that fucks his sofa, 10 occasions out of 10, I’m drawing this man,” quipped Oliver. “For those who ask me to play two truths and a lie with this man, earlier than he’d even open his mouth, I’d shout, ‘The reality is he fucks his sofa!’”
At this level some viewers may need been pushed to shout a well-known Simpsons chorus at Oliver: “Cease, he’s already dead!” However Oliver saved the jokes coming. Vance, he mentioned, “appears to be like like he watched the Tom Cruise–Oprah interview and was jealous of Tom’s sneakers”—a reference to when Cruise famously jumped on a sofa after declaring his love for brand spanking new girlfriend Katie Holmes. Vance and his supporters would in all probability accuse Oliver of being glib, however a really giddy Oliver continued to experience couch-kink comedy.
His most devastating punch line? “For those who advised me the rationale you discover cash in between sofa cushions is as a result of J.D. Vance at all times leaves a tip, I’d be like, ‘Yeah, yeah, that sounds proper.’”
Oliver additionally touched on the media fallout from the publish, noting information that the rumor made all of it the way in which to Sweden—homeland of mass sofa producer Ikea—and citing the AP fact-check article “No, J.D. Vance didn’t have intercourse with a sofa,” a web-based story later eliminated for not having gone by means of the AP’s normal modifying course of. Regardless of the story’s removing, “you may’t say J.D. Vance didn’t have intercourse with a sofa definitively,” Oliver famous. “You’ll be able to say that he didn’t write about doing that in his ebook, as a result of that’s provable. However that’s not the identical as asserting he by no means fucked a sofa, particularly as a result of he hasn’t formally denied it.”
Right here, Oliver went one step additional than Colbert, really calling Vance’s marketing campaign to see whether or not the senator would reply that query on the document. Vance’s staff’s response? “They—and that is true—hung up on us,” Oliver mentioned—earlier than making the shrewd remark that hanging up will not be, actually, a denial. Oliver and his staff then adopted up through e mail and textual content message, asking whether or not Vance had ever had intercourse with a sofa or “some other furnishings or home goods.” As of Final Week Tonight’s taping, Oliver had not but obtained a response.
