Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) hit the campaign trail on Wednesday, stopping off at a manufacturing facility in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where he took questions from the press.
Earlier in the day in Michigan, Vance sparked controversy by accusing Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz of stealing valor while speaking with a police chief who posted violent fantasies about BLM protesters in 2020.
But the questions here were a little lower stakes.
“Why would people in Wisconsin like to have a beer with you?” Vance was asked, echoing a common sentiment in American politics that voters choose who they’d like to have a beer with over any substantive policies.
“Well, I guess, I guess, they’d like, they’d want to have a beer with me because I actually do like to drink beer and, I probably like to dri’nk beer a little bit too much, but that’s OK, I’m sure the media won’t give me too much crap over that,” Vance said after laughing.
Vance then launched into an explanation about how much he likes “normal people” all around the country, and how that was something he shares with Donald Trump, who’s on the top of the Republican ticket.
“This reason I’m doing this,” Vance said, is that, “I like the people of this country” adding that he appreciates people who go to baseball games and watch TV.
Vance said that Trump also enjoys talking with “normal people” and looks for input from them in his own decision-making. He then shared a story where he said Trump told him that before he’d chosen Vance as his running mate, he’d asked the gardener at Mar-A-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach property, for his insight.
Vance said he asked Trump what the gardener said, but never finished the story.
But while it’s not so strange to like drinking beer, or even like it a little too much, some people online were rubbed the wrong way by how Vance answered, pointing to the emphasis he put on the words “I actually do like to drink beer.”
“is the joke here supposed to be ‘well i’m not sober like the other guy’ because that sucks too JD,” posted @mettaworldwar.
Walz was arrested in 1995 for drunk driving, something which has come up repeatedly in his political career. When he ran for governor in 2018 he called the incident a “gut-check moment,” and said that he no longer drinks alcohol (his favorite drink now is Diet Mountain Dew, also Vance’s soft drink of choice when he’s not (supposedly) crushing brewskis).
Outside of the implications of the way Vance emphasized his words, other posters took exception to the stilted, awkward way he talked about his alleged love for beer.
“Reporter: Why would people in Wisconsin want to have a beer with you?” riffed @0xExecute. “Vance: Ha ha ha ha. Ahh. Well, I guess they’d want to have a beer with me because, like any true Wisconsinite, I have a deep appreciation for the fine art of beer drinking. Plus, I’m pretty good at opening bottles with random household objects!”
“he’s working a litle too hard here to be like a regular dude,” observed @Howard__Wolfe.
Other people questioned whether he really was the mighty beer drinker he was presenting himself as.
“How do you do fellow drinkers of beers?!” joked @coenand over the How Do You Do, Fellow Kids? Meme.
“‘hahaha I like beer fellow humans,’” added @wsbronze over a photo of a robot
Others thought the response gave off “Kavanaugh vibes,” referencing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s “I like beer” rant during his Senate confirmation hearing.
But many, many posters cited a Simpsons clip of Homer doubting Richard Nixon’s supposed fondness for beer.
However authentic Vance’s love for beer truly is, we do have evidence of at least once time when he overindulged in a couple of cans.
At the end of July, a Facebook photo of Vance passed out in the corner of a room surrounded by red Solo cups went viral.
“This might be my first official blackout, I don’t remember being asleep at all,” Vance’s Facebook account commented on the photo, which came from his time at Ohio State.
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