Trump's campaign says it's 'not going to talk about couches'

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It finally happened: Former President Donald Trump's campaign acknowledged the baseless online meme suggesting that Sen. JD Vance once had sex with a couch.

In a statement on Wednesday, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for ducking interviews since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, saying that she and her new running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, are "scared of talking about their liberal records or policies, instead talking about non-sensical things like couches and coconuts."

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"We're not going to talk about couches or coconuts or whatever weird fetish KamalaHQ is into," Cheung said, also referencing the coconut memes associated with Harris' political persona. "When we have something to say, we'll say loud and clear. If Kamala is a coward, we'll call her a coward. If Tim Walz is a liar, we'll call him a liar."

It came after Walz made a sly reference to the meme at a rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday, his first major public appearance since Harris selected him as her running mate.

"I gotta tell you, I can't wait to debate the guy. That is, if he's willing to get off the couch and show up," the Minnesota governor said. "You see what I did there?"

.@Tim_Walz (D-MN) on @JDVance (R-OH): "I got to tell you, I can't wait to debate the guy. That is, if he's willing to get off the couch and show up." pic.twitter.com/32jSFYSSXz — CSPAN (@cspan) August 6, 2024

The meme began with a post from a single X user on July 15, the day that Trump announced Vance as his running mate, claiming that Vance had written in his 2016 autobiography "Hillbilly Elegy" about having sex with a couch.

"Can't say for sure but he might be the first vp pick to have admitted in a ny times bestseller to fucking an Inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions," read the post.

The author of the post told Business Insider that he's "really enjoyed thinking about his team and all of the idiots associated with him having to grapple with this."

The claim that Vance wrote about such things — which is obviously, verifiably false — remained largely confined to ironic chatter on social media. Then, the Associated Press published a fact-check of the claim, which only amplified the meme even more. The outlet later retracted the article, with a spokesman saying the article "didn't go through our standard editing process."

Since then, Democrats — including sitting lawmakers — have taken to making subtle allusions to the false story. That includes Harris' campaign, which wrote in one post that Vance "does not couch his hatred for women."

That's spurred criticism from the right that — even if the meme is tongue-in-cheek — Democrats are spreading baseless lies about one of their political opponents.

Harris's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why it has referenced the couch meme.