JD Vance flew into Central Florida on Thursday to rescue races Republicans never expected to sweat.
Somewhere between trashing Democrats and dodging hecklers, he decided the crowd needed to hear about the night a stranger told him how good he looked.
The vice president pitched it as a sweet campaign-trail memory he hadn’t shared with many people. It landed as the latest odd moment for a man who has spent weeks getting heckled and pleading for votes on the midterm trail.
By Vance’s own account, the woman in his story had been drinking. She also had a question for him, and the answer he says he gave her is why people keep replaying the clip.
Vance headlined a midterm rally on Thursday, Oct. 1, inside the Sun ‘n Fun hangar at Lakeland Linder International Airport, stumping for Florida GOP governor nominee Byron Donalds and Sen. Ashley Moody. Several ratings groups now rate Florida a toss-up, and even Vance admitted it’s “a live fight,” according to FOX 35 Orlando.
When he got to Donalds, Vance went off script. He said he’d had “an amazing interaction” a couple of weeks earlier at the Republicans’ midterm convention in Dallas with “a middle-aged woman who I think had been drinking.”
Donalds had just finished his speech, Vance said, and the woman, a Floridian, told him she loved them both. Then came the compliment that, in his words, made his night: “You guys are both really, really big, strong guys.”
She wasn’t finished, and neither was he. Vance told the crowd she called them “both so handsome” and gushed, “I love your beards.” He declared her his “favorite woman in the entire world,” then reminded everyone, “she’s been drinking a little bit.”
That’s when, he said, she asked whether he and Donalds, who is Black, were related. “Without skipping a beat, I said yes, he’s my second cousin,” Vance said, before jokingly urging the room to vote for his second cousin Byron Donalds. He even asked if she was in the audience and told her to raise her hand.
The joke had a second act. Minutes later, Vance bragged that the administration is “going after universities and corporations that reject applicants because they were born with the wrong skin color.” Then he circled back, joking that he and Donalds “obviously aren’t related” before praising judging people “on the content of their character and not the color of their skin.”
In other words, the tipsy-fan story was a warm-up for his anti-DEI pitch.
People wasted no time sounding off on the clip when it surfaced on social media.
One Threads user noticed the roll call. “I like how he actually asks if the woman is in the room with us right now.”
Plenty heard a familiar voice. “It’s like the ‘Big Strong Men’ who came up to Trump crying about him losing in 2020,” one user said.
“Did she refer to him as ‘Sir’? And did she have tears in her eyes?” another asked.
Others couldn’t help noticing who was missing from Vance’s tale: his wife. “She became his favorite woman in the world. Because she complimented his appearance while intoxicated/wearing beer goggles. I’m sure his wife/mother of his 4 children was thrilled to hear it,” one user wrote on X.
“His wife must love this story,” another added.
And one zeroed in on the policy pivot, with a nod to Vance’s own children with wife Usha Vance, the daughter of Indian immigrants: “Gee, JD, which one is the ‘wrong’ skin color? Were your kids born with the wrong skin color?”
As for the Trump comparison, it isn’t a stretch. The president has spent years telling stories about nameless “big, strong” men who walk up to him with tears in their eyes and call him “sir,” tales critics have long mocked as fiction.
Last December, one of his “sir” stories spiraled so badly that viewers wondered what he was really revealing. Vance’s version came with a woman, a drink and a beard compliment, but no name.
The rest of the rally wasn’t much smoother. Vance called one protester a “clown” and a “Democrat plant,” as seen in a clip shared on X.
He also told Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon, a Jacksonville-born state lawmaker who has joined the Democratic Socialists of America, to “get the hell out of here. You don’t belong in America,” according to the Washington Examiner.
That same Dallas convention is where Vance told a cheering arena Republicans were tired of being called racists for “noticing” the country was becoming “dirtier and poorer.” Days earlier, he was warning Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed to keep Usha’s name “the hell out” of his mouth in a feud that dragged in his wife and kids.
Florida votes Nov. 3, and mail ballots are already out. Whether voters buy Vance’s story is another matter.
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