JD Vance has been crisscrossing the country, trying to keep Republicans from taking a beating in next month’s midterms.
But on Tuesday, the East Texas wind had other plans. The vice president was only minutes into his remarks at a campaign rally in Tyler when the one thing he needed to get through his speech stopped cooperating.
Instead of pushing through quietly, he said the quiet part out loud.
One confession had the clip racing across social media within hours. It’s the latest misstep in a rough stretch on the stump for Donald Trump’s would-be heir.
Now, people are connecting the dots and digging up a brag he made two years ago that has aged terribly.
‘Wants to be Trump’: JD Vance Tries to Steal Trump’s Spotlight — But His Big Moment Backfires When Viewers Catch the Awkward Detail He Somehow Missed
Vance headlined the midterm rally on Tuesday, Oct. 13, at Tyler Pounds Regional Airport. He took the stage shortly before noon after an appearance from Rep. Nathaniel Moran and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running for U.S. Senate, according to the Tyler Morning Telegraph.
The paper noted Vance was the first vice president to visit Tyler since Dan Quayle in 1992.
Energizing East Texas Republicans and driving voter turnout called for a polished, on-message speech. Then the screen in front of him started flapping in the breeze.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen, I may have to go off script a little bit because this teleprompter is waving like a beautiful American flag in the wind,” Vance told the crowd, as seen in a post shared on X.
He then dropped a bombshell that sounded more like an off-the-wall confession he didn’t mean to say. “I cannot read a damn thing that it’s saying,” he admitted.
The flag comparison was supposed to land as a patriotic punchline. Online, people heard Vance more or less admit he couldn’t get through his own talking points without a script.
It wasn’t even his first teleprompter moment this month. On Oct. 1, the vice president rallied in Lakeland, Florida, alongside GOP gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds and Sen. Ashley Moody.
Another clip shared on X shows him carefully reading Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia’s name off the screen and then congratulating himself.
“That’s good I pronounced his name right or the fake news would have given me a lot of crap for it,” Vance responded at the time.
Critics online were in no mood to go easy on him after Tyler.
“Whoopsie. The VP incompetence will continue until morale improves,” one person wrote on X. Another joked, “Adlibbing can’t be any worse than what was written and that was bad.”
A third posted, “No worries! Just make it up as you go unless you cannot think on your own.” Someone else pointed straight at the president, writing, “Take a page out of Trump’s playbook and ramble like Abe Simpson.”
And one user zeroed in on Vance’s word choice, asking, “Did he just insult our flag??”
That jab cuts deeper given his boast from two years ago that hasn’t aged well.
On Aug. 28, 2024, while campaigning at a trucking company in Erie, Pennsylvania, then-Sen. Vance mocked the woman he was running against. “Ma’am, I don’t need a teleprompter, I’ve actually got thoughts in my head, unlike Kamala Harris,” he said, according to Newsweek.
Minutes later, while defending Trump’s controversial visit to Arlington National Cemetery, he called Abbey Gate “Abbey Road.” Abbey Gate is the site of the 2021 Kabul airport bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members. “Abbey Road” is a Beatles album.
Those moments haven’t always come out cleanly since.
At a conference in March, Vance took another page from Trump’s playbook, blaming staff and poor lighting for not being able to see.
“I can’t see any of you because these spotlights are glaring bright. The person who runs these spotlights must be a Democrat because I cannot see a single person in that crowd,” he said
In May, VP stumbled through a speech in Des Moines, Iowa. After an awkward pause, he admitted to the room, “I lost my page here.”
Then there’s the man he hopes to replace. Trump spent years mocking opponents for leaning on teleprompters, but his second term has been full of his own struggles with them.
At the United Nations in September 2025, he stalled when his prompter went dark and joked that whoever was operating it was “in big trouble.”
This July, the president lost his place on camera during a primetime address and read his own name aloud instead of switching to first person.
That same month, Trump appeared on second lady Usha Vance’s literacy series, “Storytime with the Second Lady.” When it came time to read a kids book, he mostly narrated the pictures.
For a vice president who has spent the campaign season insisting he’s nothing like the Democrats he mocks, the resemblance to his boss is getting harder to ignore.
Smith County voters can cast early ballots Oct. 19 through Oct. 30 ahead of the Nov. 3 election. That leaves Vance a few more weeks of rallies to prove he really does have thoughts in his head, as long as the wind cooperates.
JD Vance just lost his teleprompter. 🤣🤣🤣 "I cannot read a damn thing that it’s saying." https://t.co/sOvDLQsXWc
— Donk Media ♻️™ (@donkoclock) October 13, 2026
