Support truly
independent journalism
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance turned the joyous task of ordering donuts into a deliciously awkward encounter, a new video reveals.
The Ohio Senator walked into a donut shop in Georgia ahead of his remarks in Valdosta, Georgia on Thursday, where he introduced himself to a server who immediately said she did not want to be filmed, in a stilted exchange that is not helping the Republican candidate divorce himself from the “weird” label.
“I’m JD Vance. I’m running for vice president,” Vance tells the donut shop worker, who simply replies: “Okay.”
“We’re gonna do two dozen. Just a random assortment of stuff here,” he continues while browsing the donuts in the display cases.
“Everything. A lot of glazed here. Sprinkle stuff. A lot of cinnamon rolls. Just whatever makes sense,” Vance said.
As the worker fills up his box of donuts, Vance struggles to make small talk by asking workers behind the counter how long they have been working there.
He asked one worker how long the place had been around, and was told it had been in business for four years.
“About four years? Okay,” Vance said. “Well, we selected this place. I didn’t know if it had been here for 20 years or four years. You never know.”
The clip comes as Vance has strived to combat the “weird” description that Democrats, including vice president Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, have given him.
A series of resurfaced clips and text messages capturing Vance’s extreme stances have contributed to this label. Vance called pregnancy resulting from rape “inconvenient,” branded Harris a “childless cat lady,” suggested that parents should have more of a vote than childless adults, and drastically flip-flopped on his views about Trump.
Vance’s cringey donut shop visit is reminiscent of another recent flubbed food stop — which social media users ate up.
Earlier this week, Vance tried to crack a joke when ordering a Philly cheesesteak at the famed Pat’s King of Steaks, but he wound up being accused of committing a “crime against humanity.”
“I don’t like Swiss cheese either, but everybody says it’s insulting,” Vance told a worker at the joint, which is considered the inventor of the cheesesteak and famously only uses American, provolone or cheez whiz in the delicacy. “Why do you guys hate Swiss cheese so much?”
The employee replied: “We don’t hate it, we just don’t use it. We usually use cheez whiz.”
While Vance seemed to have been cleverly referencing John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, when he asked for a cheesesteak sandwich with Swiss cheese during a visit to Pat’s, the internet thought the encounter hurt his campaign chances.
He also recently found himself in a bind when one of his attempts at a joke came back to bite him.
“When asked this week how he is preparing to debate Tim Walz in October, Vance replied: “Well, I found a good friend from back home who embellishes and lies a lot, I’m having him stand in for Tim Walz.”
But the insult quickly backfired as several social media users joked Vance was referencing Donald Trump, who has become notorious for lying over everything from election results and crowd sizes to the weather. The Washington Post estimated that during his presidency he made more than 30,000 false or misleading statements.
