Memes of Vice President JD Vance’s face edited into recognizable memes and grotesque caricatures have flooded social media in recent weeks—and the vice president participated Saturday, posting one such meme on his X account (though it’s notably more flattering than those that have gone viral).
Memes of Vice President JD Vance have flooded social media. (Photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images)
Vance posted a picture of his face edited over a widely used meme of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at a screen in a scene from “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”—but unlike most viral Vance memes, his face in this meme isn’t edited to be comically large.
Viral memes of Vance edited to resemble a child have flooded the internet for weeks, including an edit from Vance’s White House clash with President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, where a picture of a childlike Vance is captioned: “You shoulda said pwease.”
Many of the memes depict Vance with exaggerated baby fat, including one of him arriving at Trump’s address to Congress, others of him at the vice presidential debate, and several of his vice presidential portrait.
Some of the edits imagine Vance, who at 40 is one of the United States’ youngest-ever vice presidents, as childish to an absurd degree, editing him holding comically oversized lollipops or wearing propeller hats.
Other viral memes depict Vance’s face as bright-red or wildly distorted, complete with messy long hair and piercing eyes—while some superimposed Vance’s face onto other people, including “JD Al-Assad” and “Marjorie Taylor Vance.”
The Vance memes date back to at least October, months before he took office as vice president. Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., posted a photo of Vance’s face edited to have an especially chiseled jawline and sharp cheekbones, sparking jokes and more memes. Hours later, an X user posted a photo of Vance’s government portrait with a much more rounded face, stating: “For every 100 likes I will turn JD Vance into a progressively apple cheeked baby.” The post earned more than 211,000 likes—and the user did not enlarge Vance’s face thousands of times, but they did enlarge it multiple times before posting edits of Vance as a woman and a multi-headed monster inspired by the film “The Substance.” Edits of Vance’s face continued to take over social media over the following months, but they appeared to go particularly viral in March following Vance’s contentious White House meeting with Trump and Zelenskyy.
The memes appear to have been spread by both left and right-wing social media users. Though many of the memes seem to have been posted by left-wing users to make fun of Vance, some right-wing social media users have embraced the jokes. Catturd, a right-wing X account with more than 3.6 million followers, has posted several Vance memes, calling them “hilarious.” Auron MacIntyre, a columnist for The Blaze, suggested the memes could propel Vance’s political career to the presidency, stating he would be “thoroughly memed that he becomes immune to the effect before ever entering office.” Some X users have noted how widespread the memes are and joked they don’t even remember what Vance really looks like. Collins, who posted one of the original Vance memes in October, tweeted Friday: “My feed is broken. I just keep seeing JD Vance.” Singer Dionne Warwick posted: “Every time I open this app I see a brand new picture of JD Vance made to look like some sort of Cabbage Patch doll. “I have completely forgotten what the real JD Vance looks like at this point,” one X user posted, garnering 300,000 likes.
Vance is the latest vice president to receive the meme treatment—after former Vice President Kamala Harris went widely viral for her bizarre, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” quote, which her supporters embraced as she mounted her presidential bid last year. She also embraced memes and edits comparing her campaign to Charli XCX’s album “Brat,” and drew comparisons to Julia-Louis Dreyfus’ character in the HBO sitcom “Veep.” At a campaign stop in October, Harris said, “I know the memes,” invoking her other widely memed phrase: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
The Internet Is Doing Weird Things to J. D. Vance’s Face (The Atlantic)
JD Vance, Trump’s MAGA Successor, Will Be One of America’s Youngest Vice Presidents (New York Times)