Pritzker repeats a baseless claim about J.D. Vance and couches. That’s Pants on Fire!

J.B. Pritzker, Illinois’ Democratic governor, attacked the Republican presidential ticket July 28 by repeating a salacious claim about Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio.

"I mean, on the other side, they’re just weird," Pritzker said during an interview on ABC News’ "This Week." "You know, (former President Donald Trump’s) running mate, as you probably have heard, is, you know, getting known for his obsession with couches."

Pritzker’s team supplied no evidence to support this statement. During a July 29 Zoom fundraiser billed as "White Dudes for Harris" to support Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, Pritzker made another reference to couches, joking that he would invite everyone to a separate Zoom meeting "called ‘Couches Against Trump.’" He also dropped mention of Vance and "the talk about couches" during a July 29 press conference (56:34).

Pritzker’s claim referred to the false assertion that Vance wrote in his bestselling 2016 book, "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis," that he had a sexual encounter with a couch.

NewsGuard, a company that monitors online misinformation, found the claim originated with a satirical X post that said Vance had written about pleasuring himself with a couch. Snopes also traced the claim’s origin to a July 15 X post that is no longer publicly viewable and called it false. In that now-archived post, the X user cited Pages 179-181 in Vance’s book.

But "Hillbilly Elegy" contains no such passage. 

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Laura Loomer

stated on July 31, 2024 in an X post

“Nowhere on her birth certificate does it say that she is BLACK OR AFRICAN. … Kamala Harris is NOT black and never has been.”

PolitiFact searched a digital copy of the book’s 2016 edition and found 10 mentions of the word "couch" — none of them in the context to which this claim refers. We found no mentions of "sofa," "lounge," "settee" or "love seat."

We read through Pages 179 to 181 in a 2016 paperback edition of the book, and found that on these pages Vance described his college experience at Ohio State University, and didn’t mention a couch. Vance wrote about arriving at the university and going through orientation day. He also wrote about the city of Columbus and its proximity to Middletown, the town where he grew up. And he wrote on these pages about his college roommates, filling out financial aid forms, his desire to go to law school and taking a job at the Ohio Statehouse to help pay off his debt.

PolitiFact contacted Vance’s office and will update the story if it responds.

Pritzker’s claim that Vance has an "obsession with couches" is unfounded. We rate it Pants on Fire!