J.D. Vance once told a friend he thought Trump could be America's Hitler - now he's Trump's running mate. Video edit by Alyse Wright. Video / NZ Herald, Getty Images
The Associated Press has pulled an article fact-checking the claim that JD Vance had written about “having sex with a couch” in his bestselling memoir.
The news outlet published an article on Wednesday in which it reviewed allegations that Donald Trump’s running mate had detailed thesexual act in his 2016 book, and concluded they were false.
But by Thursday the story headlined, “No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch”, had been removed, with the link taking viewers to a landing page saying “page unavailable”.
It is not clear why AP removed the article, beyond that it had fallen short of its editorial standards.
But by publishing and removing the story, the outlet has arguably drawn more attention to the baseless social media rumour than it would have otherwise got – a phenomenon known as the “Streisand effect”.
In trying to remove an image of the singer’s Malibu home from an article, Barbra Streisand’s publicist only generated more interest in the story.
‘Can’t say for sure’
The AP story, which is accessible through the internet archive Wayback Machine, was published as part of its “effort to address widely shared false and misleading information”.
The story sought to assess the claim that “Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance wrote in his 2016 memoir about having sex with a couch”.
The rumour is understood to have started in July when a Twitter user wrote: “Can’t say for sure but he might be the first VP pick to have admitted in a NY Times bestseller to f***ing an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions (Vance, Hillbilly Elegy, pp. 179-181).”
JD Vance and Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin. Photo / Daniel Torok
The AP included comments from social media in which users said Vance “wrote about humping a couch”.
Another tweet referenced in the story said: “JD Vance described having sex with a rubber glove secured between cushions on his couch... Voters in NC, the US furniture capital, should be particularly horrified.”
The outlet said the allegation was “false” after it reviewed a searchable PDF copy of his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.
It said that the book “includes 10 mentions of the word ‘couch’ or ‘couches’, none of which are related to accounts of salacious escapades”.
“The word ‘glove’ does not appear in the book at all. Nor does ‘sofa’,” the article added.
‘Looking into it’
The AP reporter said they had reviewed pages 179 and 181 in a physical copy of the book and found they referenced Vance’s days at Ohio State University in 2008.
“Topics he covers include arriving on campus for orientation, his proximity to his hometown, the ‘brain drain’ phenomenon, filling out financial aid forms and his desire to go to law school,” it said.
After the story was removed, a spokesman for AP said it “didn’t go through our standing editing process”.
The article had not been sent out to customers on the wire service, the spokesman said.
