It provided for some funny memes, but the story also serves as yet another example of the liberal media going indiscriminately insane trying to find anything to attack Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance. Vance is getting torched by the media, who are attacking him for his socially conservative positions. Yet, one thing the Associated Press fact-checked about the Ohio Republican was this wild story about him having sex with a couch, which some said was mentioned in his book Hillbilly Elegy. It’s not true. It didn’t need a fact check, but the AP team decided to post it anyway to humiliate the Republican vice presidential candidate.
Associated Press pulls story fact-checking whether JD Vance had sex with a couch https://t.co/CzHNm1zK1j
— SFGATE (@SFGate) July 25, 2024
If I was a cynical person I would think the liberal AP is “fact checking” this false thing some rando tweeted in order to foster a cloud of embarrassment around JD Vance pic.twitter.com/Ncvc5gPee0
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) July 25, 2024
Did the Associated Press retract its fact-check article denying JD Vance had sex with a couch? pic.twitter.com/P4nI6mqd4o
— Jacob Shamsian ⚖️ (@JayShams) July 25, 2024
The Associated Press eventually took it down after facing intense criticism, with the outlet admitting that the post did not meet its editorial standards (via NY Post):
The Associated Press is being ridiculed after it pulled down a “fact check” story on an X-rated hoax about Trump running-mate JD Vance involving a couch and a rubber glove, claiming it “didn’t go through [their] standard editing process” before publication.
The article, which was tagged with an authoritative “AP Fact Check” header, was titled “No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch,” alluding to a fake claim that the Ohio senator described making love to a sofa in graphic detail in his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”
The salacious hoax spread like wildfire on social media, reportedly sparked by an X user who tweeted out a description of the alleged lewd act complete with a bogus citation.
Of course, no such passage exists in Vance’s bestseller, “Hillbilly Elegy,” but that didn’t stop the rumor from spreading — with many apparently believing it was true, including comedian and known twit Kathy Griffin.
[…]
The wire service’s rigorous assessment included scanning through a “searchable PDF” of the book for the word “couch” or “couches” — which came up 10 times in total, though never in the context of a sex act.
[…]
“The story, which did not go out on the wire to our customers, didn’t go through our standard editing process. We are looking into how that happened,” an AP spokesperson told The Post.
Author and journalist Noah Rothman slammed the Associated Press as “sleazy” for deleting the article, and for giving the fake claim — which emanated from an anonymous X user with less than 1,800 followers — any oxygen whatsoever.
“Last night, the AP published a ‘fact check’ of utterly unknown nobodies who alleged that JD Vance fornicated a couch, not because anyone believed that but because it introduces that nonsense into the bloodstream. Today, it’s gone. So sleazy.”
Just ridiculous. Yet, again, some of the reactions were funny. Of all the things the media could use, they chose a hoax. I would hope the Vance camps had a good laugh at this one; the media stepped on a rake on this one.