A photograph of Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance wearing a red T-shirt featuring a Soviet hammer and sickle has gone viral on social media.
The image was posted to X/Twitter by user @clliday on July 24, showing Vance in the garment surrounded by four men, three of whom are dressed as professional wrestlers at what appears to be a costume party.
It has been re-posted numerous times by several accounts, and has been viewed over 1 million times across the posts. Some posters intentionally cropped the other costumed men out of the photo.
Vance’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
User @travis_county, a Kamala Harris supporter, re-posted a cropped version of the image on Sunday, writing “run this everywhere in Miami and Miami Dade county.” The post has been viewed 937,000 times.
Another user, @raymo_g, a self-proclaimed “conservative computer scientist and entrepreneur” posted the image with the caption “JD Vance is so f****** weird.” It has been viewed 81,000 times.
User @golub, a supporter of Ukraine in its war against Russia, posted the image with the caption ” JD Vance in a Soviet communist T-Shirt,” garnering 312,000 views by Monday. Vance has previously said that Ukraine should cede land to Russia to end the war.
However, conservative user @PolitiBunny downplayed the significance of the T-shirt, highlighting that the photo appeared to have been taken at a costume party. She called people sharing the cropped version of the picture and claiming the vice presidential candidate was a communist ” morons” and said the image shows that “Vance is a wrestling fan. Not a Communist.” Her post had been viewed 12,000 times by Monday.
There is no evidence that Vance was ever a communist, or anything other than a Republican. He worked for Republican Ohio State Senator Bob Schuler in his first year of college and worked for Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn after he graduated law school.
However, Vance has faced criticism for his about turn on Donald Trump, transforming from a harsh critic of the former president before entering politics himself, to a staunch MAGA loyalist when he ran for senate in 2022, eventually becoming Trump’s running mate earlier this month.
In 2022, Georgia State Senate member Josh McLaurin, who was Vance’s roommate at Yale University and is a Democrat, shared text messages the two sent each other in 2016. The texts show Vance saying a “demagogue” would appeal to lower-income white voters.
“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a****** like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler,” Vance reportedly wrote in a text. “How’s that for discouraging?”
Previously, Vance has disparaged Trump more publicly, saying: “I can’t vote for Trump, I think that he is noxious.”
Vance has also criticized Trump for making “people I care about afraid, Immigrants, Muslims.”
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
