Vice President JD Vance has admitted to seeing the wide range of memes of his distorted face making the rounds online.
Vance has been depicted as a round-faced baby, an emo, an alien, chicken nuggets, and a toddler wearing a propeller hat and holding a large lollipop. Edited photos by social media users also show Vance as the late painter Bob Ross and a Despicable Me minion.
The vice president told Julio Rosas of the rightwing outlet The Blaze on March 5 that he thinks it’s a funny trend.
The memes started to be spread following the Oval Office blow-up between Vance, President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The conversation in front of the White House press corps turned into a shouting match as Vance asked Zelensky, “Have you said thank you once?”
Zelensky has expressed his gratitude to the U.S. for its support dozens and dozens of times.
Vance was quickly mocked for the question - and the memes soon followed.
One post showing a smiling Vance with his face edited to be inflated and his eye widened, captioned: “You have to say pwease and tank you, Mistow Zensky.”
It has been viewed more than 13 million times.
Conservatives have depicted Vance in the form of the GigaChad meme, an alpha male and a nationalist icon with a cutting jawline.
Assistant professor of media studies at New York’s Queens College, Jamie Cohen, told The Washington Post that “This is a bit of a Rorschach test for politics in general.”
“The MAGA right sees Vance as becoming torchbearer of the movement,” Cohen added. “The left sees him as a potential shill for whatever he needs to do to make himself more politically usable. And that’s how you get all these different remixes.”
Cohen told the paper that the widespread Vance memes are where politics, technology, and online culture collide. Artificial intelligence and apps such as Facetune have streamlined the process of altering the appearance of politicians and public figures in general.
“The left saw Vance as a petulant child throwing a tantrum and interrupting Zelensky,” said Cohen.
Meanwhile, conservatives viewed Vance “as a hardened hero championing America First. That’s one of the reasons why you get this dichotomy in the memes.”
You have to say pwease and tank you, Mistow Zensky pic.twitter.com/OOVPIdtrVf
— Barflugnarven🇻🇦 (@barflugnarven) February 28, 2025
The internet meme database Know Your Meme states that the meme craze surrounding Vance began in October 2024, when a user on X posted a picture of the then-senator with slightly rounder cheeks.
“For every 100 likes, I will turn J.D. Vance into a progressively apple-cheeked baby,” the account stated. It has been viewed more than seven million times as of Friday, and has more than 211,000 likes.
“Right now, we’re still in the ‘collector space’ — people are creating alternate versions, hoarding them, pushing the meme in stranger directions. Until that energy fades, there’s no reason for it to die down,” Cohen told The Post.
