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Serial fabulist and former Republican Congressman George Santos suggested that he knows the answer to the question of whether JD Vance wears eyeliner.
While many watching the vice presidential debate on Tuesday night were concerned about the candidates’ policies, a flurry of social media users were distracted over whether the Republican vice presidential nominee was wearing makeup. Santos has now waded in to try to settle the online debate once and for all.
“Vance does NOT use eyeliner,” he declared bluntly on X after the debate had concluded.
“I’ve met him in person before he was a senator and I can confirm he has long eyelashes and they cast a shadow on his waterline when is studios full of lights…Grow up people!” Santos added.
The disgraced ex-Congressman is no stranger to makeup himself.
He announced in April that he would revive his drag queen alter ego on the video platform Cameo — despite months of denying that he had ever been one. Santos said in a December 2023 interview that he was very familiar with makeup: “If I was a career drag queen then, like everybody likes to claim, then I must be a myth of a drag queen now... I wear far more makeup today.”
Google searches asking whether Vance wears eyeliner shot up in the moments after the debate started.
One X user joked: “Tim Walz is already at a disadvantage, being the only one on stage not wearing eyeliner.”
Another posted a photo of a disappointed Walz looking at Vance during the debate with the caption: “How every emo kid’s dad looked at him the first time he tried on his sister’s Hollister jeans and eyeliner.”
Even the Lincoln Project joined in on the theory, posting a clip of Vance with a filter on top of it, showing him with swooped dark hair and a nose piercing, writing: “Long lasting waterproof eyeliner stays on even after 90 mins of whining and lying.”
Photojournalist Zach Roberts posted a zoomed-in photo of Vance’s eye, before announcing that he, too, had solved the eyeliner investigation. But he came to a different conclusion than Santos: “I really thought people were joking about this, but then I photographed him last week. Vance 100% does wear eyeliner.”
In August, Vance’s wife Usha tried to quash the eyeliner theory, telling PuckNews: "They're all natural. I've always been jealous of those lashes."