Bizarre JD Vance Claims That Seriously Raised Eyebrows

JD Vance hasn't had the most impressive track record as vice president. According to a 2025 poll conducted by Real Clear Politics, the "Hillbilly Elegy" author's favorable-unfavorable rating was a saddening 41.7 percent to 44.8 percent. Although his chat with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave him a slight boost among conservatives, the former Ohio senator's initial rating still crowned him as one of the most disliked VPs in U.S. history. Then, in March 2025, JD's night out with wife Usha Vance started with boos, which made the public's dislike for him glaringly obvious.

To make matters worse, the bestselling author can't seem to catch a break at work either since boss Donald Trump just won't stop taking shots at him. When the president sat down for a chat with Fox News' Bret Baier in February 2025, the interviewer questioned if he could see JD taking over the reins in 2028. According to The Independent, Trump gave a brutally honest answer, reasoning, "No, but is he very capable. I mean, I don't think that you know, I think you have a lot of very capable people." He continued, "So far, I think he is doing a fantastic job. It's too early. We are just starting." 

Throughout his presidential campaign and beyond, Trump took several shady digs at JD while making it abundantly clear that he favored tech billionaire and so-called "first buddy" Elon Musk over him. Despite all the pushback, the former Ohio senator arguably hasn't done much to curb his unpopularity. In fact, all the awkward JD moments that have been caught on camera, and his many bizarre claims, have only made things worse.

In September 2024, JD Vance took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to voice his concerns about illegal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, abducting and eating the residents' pets. A few days later, Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that one of Vance's staffers had reached out to him shortly after the tweet was posted. "He asked point-blank, 'Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?'" Heck recalled of their wild conversation. "I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless." 

However, that didn't stop Donald Trump from repeating the claim during his one and only presidential debate with Democratic opponent Kamala Harris. The divisive politician even got embarrassingly fact-checked by moderator David Muir, who interjected to clarify that the outlandish idea wasn't backed up by facts. While Vance took to X to insist that his assertions were based on his office's inquiries, the "Hillbilly Elegy" author nonetheless conceded, "It's possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false." 

However, Vance also argued that even if his initial claim turned out not to be true, illegal Haitian immigrants were still supposedly causing major problems in the city. While defending himself, the politician dug himself into a deeper hole by making yet another false claim. In his post, Vance also wrote that hospitals were seeing cases of HIV and other communicable diseases pouring in, but that also didn't seem to be the case, as Clark County records only showed a negligible increase in communicable disease cases.

While speaking to reporters in October 2024, JD Vance made a bizarre claim about the 2020 elections that everybody already knew to be false. "Did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use," the former Ohio Senator stated emphatically, per NBC News. Vance doubled down on his claim at another campaign event later in the day, by positing simply, "I think that Big Tech rigged the election in 2020." Somewhat surprisingly, that wasn't even his wildest claim about the president. 

When Vance sat down for a chat with ABC News' Martha Raddatz in October 2024, she questioned whether Trump intended to take his political opponents down if he returned to office. "Martha, he was president for four years and he didn't go after his political opponents," the future VP replied. Needless to say, that claim has been proven false numerous times. According to a September 2024 New York Times report, back in 2018, the Republican leader informed his aides that if the Justice Department didn't launch an investigation into Hillary Clinton or former FBI director James B. Comey, Trump would do the needful on his own. 

Of course, the divisive politician's efforts weren't just limited to those two either. As CNN reported, he also tried to go after Former President Joe Biden, Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and several other prominent political figures in similar ways. In addition to everything he did behind the scenes, the controversial politician also demeaned his political opponents in basically every way possible. So, it's safe to say that Vance's claim is nothing short of strange.

In March 2025, JD Vance shared a story on X that, frankly, nobody actually believed: "Today while walking my 3 year old daughter a group of 'Slava Ukraini' protesters followed us around and shouted as my daughter grew increasingly anxious and scared." The vice president elaborated that he had traded a few precious minutes of his time to get the protestors off their backs, with Vance finishing his post by labeling them terrible people for following him around when he was with his young child.

Although part of the former Ohio senator's interaction with the protestors was caught on camera, most people on X found a glaringly obvious hole in the story: The fact that the vice president of the United States would casually wander around the streets, with his little daughter in tow, without any sort of protection from the Secret Service. One commentator also found it incredibly convenient that the interaction just so happened to take place when the press was around Vance. 

Another X critic even used the Republican politician's own insults for protestors to slam him, pointing out, "If you lie to advance your political position you're also a s*** person. I'm talking about you JD." Somebody even accused Vance of using his children to draw attention away from all the terrible things that he had already done as part of the Trump administration. Meanwhile, another user posted a video that supposedly showed that it was a peaceful protest that didn't take place around Vance's house, which naturally had police surrounding it. Likewise, a protestor clarified to WCPO that "nobody was chasing him," per the New York Post. 

JD Vance essentially made one strange remark after another when he appeared on "The Joe Rogan Experience" in October 2024. When the controversial podcast host suggested that martial arts could play a huge role in making people more conservative, Vance opined, "Have you seen all these studies that basically connect testosterone levels in young men with conservative politics?" He followed that up with another equally bizarre statement, confidently claiming, "Maybe that's why the Democrats want us all to be poor health and overweight. It means we're going to be more liberal." 

It's unclear where the bestselling author got that idea since Former President Joe Biden's administration did plenty to curb obesity rates and even tried to include weight loss drugs under Medicare and Medicaid. Needless to say, there is also nothing to propose that weight factors into a person's political beliefs. Unfortunately, that wasn't even the weirdest thing that came out of Vance's mouth during the appearance. 

Elsewhere, the Republican politician contended that some people were undergoing gender-reaffirming surgery to have a better shot of getting into Ivy League colleges. Of course, there were no credible reports of people undergoing a major, expensive, and life-changing surgery for the sake of meeting their educational goals. Additionally, Vance also claimed that he had seen leftist women on social media celebrating their abortions with cakes. However, even Rogan evidently found that comment too bizarre, interjecting to note that only an incredibly small group of people would do that. 

During JD Vance's vice presidential debate against Tim Walz, he tried to diminish Donald Trump's role in the 2021 Capitol attack. "Remember he said that on January the 6th, the protestors ought to protest peacefully," the bestselling author argued. Although the divisive politician did indeed urge protestors to remain peaceful, he also riled them up further by warning, "If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." 

Meanwhile, when Vance appeared on NBC's "Meet The Press" in September 2024, he attempted to defend another of Trump's highly controversial moves: His attacks on the Affordable Care Act. The future VP proclaimed that his boss had tried to "build upon the plan," when in reality, Trump's 2020 administration repeatedly undermined the crucial healthcare act in one way or another. It's worth noting that when CNN's Dana Bash asked Vance about his own, widely-debunked Haitian illegal immigrant pet-eating story, he provided an answer that made it clear that he wasn't too fussed about his bizarre claims. 

As Vance rationalized, "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do," (via X). Then, when the reporter pointed out that the former Ohio senator had essentially admitted that he made the story up, Vance attempted to save face by reasoning that they had used real inquiries from their office to craft a narrative that would garner attention from the public. Suffice it to say that he likely takes a similar outlook on all his other wild stories.