9 Times JD Vance Couldn't Beat The Eyeliner Allegations

Ever since becoming the vice presidential nominee on the Republican Party's 2024 ticket, JD Vance has been bombarded with rumors of wearing eyeliner. Not that there's anything wrong with that. After all, as musician and activist Frank Zappa once said, "Politics is the entertainment branch of industry," and if you're in show business, you'd better look good.

From some perspectives, politics has been less about policy and more about aesthetics for decades. Richard Nixon refused to wear makeup in 1960 for the first televised presidential debate, something he later claimed helped lead to his defeat by John F. Kennedy. Ronald Reagan was certainly used to wearing makeup; he won the presidency partly thanks to his movie star persona. Of course, there's also Donald Trump's makeup routine, which is arguably more involved than any president in American history.

While a bit less attention has been paid to Vance's alleged makeup (which is decidedly less orange), his glammed-up peepers nonetheless blow up social media from time to time, and it's getting hard for him to deny the rumors.

Before becoming vice president, JD Vance had a relatively brief political career. Having worked as a corporate lawyer and in the venture capital arena, the author-turned-politician was elected as a senator for Ohio in 2022. By July 2024, Donald Trump announced him as his running mate in the 2024 election, which served as Vance's proper introduction to the world. People were about to learn about Vance's shady side in more ways than one.

Attention was paid to Vance's eyes immediately, with arguably more people paying attention to his looks than to the woman in the race, Kamala Harris. "Is it just me, or does JD Vance have better eyeliner than Kamala Harris?" asked someone on X. "JD Vance has the eyeliner on thick tonight as he sits next to tan man strawberry blondie. What a pair," wrote another.

Right after Vance's appearance at the 2024 Republican National Convention, people took to TikTok to break down the eyeliner allegations. People on TikTok and X even claimed to know what product he was using. His wife, Usha Vance, denied that he wore eyeliner, telling Puck News (via The Daily Beast), "They're all natural. I've always been jealous of those lashes." Maybe Trump was, too, as he has reportedly commented favorably about Vance's looks — especially his blue eyes and long eyelashes.

Folks focused on JD Vance's dark eyes throughout the 2024 campaign trail, sometimes out of dumbfounded curiosity (or even jealousy), but mostly for laughs. Generally speaking, people didn't mock Vance's alleged eyeliner routine because they disagreed with men wearing eyeliner; if anything, it was the opposite. Because of Vance's conservative, gender normative beliefs and frequent rhetorical and political attacks against the LGBTQ+ community, the idea that he'd wear eyeliner seemed both ironic and hypocritical. As one social media user asked on X, "So it's okay for JD Vance to wear a ton of eye liner but not drag queens? Just trying to understand how much makeup is too much makeup for MAGA."

Vance's July 30, 2024, appearance at a rally in Reno, Nevada, continued the online flurry of makeup mockery. Late-night comedy shows relished lampooning Vance's eyes; "Jimmy Kimmel Live" even cast "The Sixth Sense" actor Haley Joel Osment in overexaggerated eyeliner to portray Vance in recurring segments. The day after the Reno rally, Slate published an article asking, "Is J.D. Vance wearing eyeliner?" One day later, on August 1, "The Daily Show" posted what would become a viral TikTok in which host Desi Lydic questioned whether Vance wore "Maybelline Faux Hillbilly" or "Revlon Super Smudge."

"The Daily Show" video has garnered more than 3.3 million views and nearly 3,500 comments as of October 2025. "Maybe it's JD. Maybe it's maybelleine," wrote one TikTok user in a comment that received more than 32,000 likes. "I think it's tattooed in," wrote another. One social media user sparked a long thread of replies in the comments by writing, "It's giving captain jack sparrow," with someone replying, "An evil, non-comical non-silly captain Jack sparrow."

It became increasingly difficult for JD Vance to deny wearing eyeliner or makeup of any kind when photographs of his college years were unearthed in August 2024. First, a picture of Vance at Yale Law School in 2012 was posted to X, showing him playing beer pong while wearing a blonde wig, a black and red dress, and dark eyeliner. Representatives for Vance did not deny that it was the then-vice presidential candidate. While a Yale student told The Daily Beast that the picture was taken on Halloween, Vance seemed to be the only person in the group who wore a costume of any kind.

As always, commenters were quick to notice Vance's eyes. "I'll give JD Vance this- his eyeliner is totally on point in that photo.. so much better than whatever 90s boy band guy liner he's got going on now," replied one person on X. Another summed up the purpose of even posting these photos by writing, "Remember: It's not about J.D. Vance in drag; it's the hypocrisy." Other photos of Vance emerged, including one with the Yale student wearing a necklace and playing with his blonde wig while he posed intimately for the camera. This even led to a website called JD Vance in Drag (which directed people to a nonprofit for the suicide prevention of LGBTQ+ youth and different fundraisers).

If modern politics is entertainment, then one of its main missions is distraction and obfuscation. That's certainly what JD Vance's eyes did during his vice presidential debate with Democrat Tim Walz on October 1, 2024. While fact-checks show that Vance lied about everything from health care and immigration to taxes and climate change during the debate, viewers seemed to be more interested in the aesthetics. "I can't focus on Vance, I keep wondering how many Sephora points he has," wrote one X user. "JD Vance has the face of a man caught between eras. He looks like he wants to segregate a My Chemical Romance concert," added another in a post that was viewed more than 2.3 million times.

Multiple articles appeared after the debate that analyzed Vance's eyes and collected the countless social media speculations about the eyeliner allegations. Elle interviewed a variety of celebrity makeup artists, most of whom concluded that Vance probably wasn't wearing eyeliner but was instead simply born with a thick lash line. Rep. George Santos spoke out amid the speculation, saying he never saw Vance in eyeliner when they were together in Congress, but the fact that he's a notorious (and convicted) liar didn't exactly do Vance any favors. Suffice it to say, Trump's VP pick could just have trichomegaly (abnormally long eyelashes) or distichiasis (a set of eyelashes in the eye's inner lining).

After an assassination attempt cut short his July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Donald Trump returned to the town on October 5, 2024, with JD Vance in tow. Vance's eyes popped as usual, but social media users were quick to point out the potential makeup danger of wearing eyeliner on this particularly hot day, wondering if the sweat would cause his eyeliner to run. "Wait I swear i see a little black smudge coming out of the corner of his left eye," wrote someone on X (per The Mirror). "It looks warm. I hope JD Vance's eyeliner is waterproof, as he will be sweating a lot," wrote another.

With the rally coming shortly after the vice presidential debate, eyeliner-gate was in peak form. A popular Reddit thread formed to discuss Vance's makeup, with the original poster writing, "If the president race was about eyeliner, Vance would win in a landslide because holy hell that is some damn good eyeliner ... I will love to know the brand, where to buy, and the style he is doing. No I'm not Republican, I'm goth and love eyeliner." The thread is filled with hundreds of Redditors speculating and posting close-up images of Vance's eyes. Again, all this ruminating over Vance's peepers distracted from the inflammatory rhetoric of his speech. For instance, he erroneously claimed Kamala Harris and the Democrats declared war on free speech, but at least he looked good saying it.

JD Vance's eyes continued to distract spectators after the Republicans won the 2024 presidential election, and he became the vice president. Vance's inaugural portrait was released on January 15, 2025, and while it wasn't nearly as intimidating as Donald Trump's, it was hard to ignore the dark rings around his big blue orbs in it. As usual, social media users enjoyed highlighting what appeared to be makeup in the portrait, with one responding to it on X with a GIF of Gene Simmons in his traditional KISS makeup. Other users posted GIFs of various celebrities and singers wearing thick eyeliner, along with comments such as, "His eye liner and lip gloss are on point in this photo. Well done JD!"

When commentator Brian Tyler Cohen posted the portrait on Facebook and asked his audience what they thought of it, hundreds of comments pointed out Vance's eyes. "It looks like he's looking up as you can see the whites and his pupils are mostly hidden by his hooded eyelids. He could use an eye lift." Another wrote, "He looks dead behind the eyes," and a third summed it all up by adding, "Why does his eyes look like that?"

JD Vance's rumored eyeliner was on full display during the infamous meeting between Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and Vance, Donald Trump, and others on February 28, 2025. That meeting was memorable for the president and vice president's rude rhetoric toward their supposed ally, with Vance asking (per PBS), "Have you said 'thank you' once?" Also memorable were the veep's dark eyes, which inevitably captured the internet's attention. It also made it kind of ridiculous for Vance to assume a tough-guy demeanor, what with his smoky eyes and all.

"Every time Vance is mentioned or shown, I focus on his eyebrows/lashes," wrote someone on social media, per The Irish Star. Another added, "The use of eyeliner is very visible. Can someone please tell me his makeup routine?" The online supposition continued into the evening, when Vance appeared with shady Fox News host Sean Hannity for an interview about the Zelensky fiasco with noticeably shadier eyes. The Daily Star chronicled some of the social media speculation in an article titled, "JD Vance's 'eyeliner' steals the spotlight during interview as viewers beg for his makeup routine," with one user commenting, "Every time Vance is mentioned or shown, I focus on his eyebrows/lashes."

Just a couple of weeks after his infamous appearance with the president of Ukraine, JD Vance met with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin and seemingly took his look to the extreme. Even respected journalists commented on Vance's eyes, with Aaron Rupar posting a video of the meeting on X and writing, "JD Vance went heavy on the eyeliner this morning." Whether that was true or if it was just some weird effect of the lighting, it was impossible to ignore the vice president's inky dark eyes.

Rupar's X post received more than 80 thousand likes and thousands of comments, with one user writing, "I think JD Vance and Adam Lambert are the same person ... has anyone seen them in the same room together at the same time? I didn't think so ..." Other commenters compared Vance to Robert Smith of The Cure and Boy George, and another wrote, "Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ — did JD Vance just get jumped by an Avon lady with a grudge, or is he auditioning for CATS?"

In an article titled, "People are convinced JD Vance is back on the eyeliner and of all the A++ responses this one knocks the rest out of the park," The Poke went through a variety of these money comments and chose their favorite. This happened to be trans journalist Ari Drennen, who gave Vance some advice on X: "Pro tip from a trans woman: when you have hooded eyes, completely circling them with black eyeliner recesses them, making the skin above your eye look droopier and your eyes look smaller. Keep the dark liner on the outer portion and try a little sparkle in the inner corner!"

JD Vance's eyes aren't just the target of Americans' speculation (and mockery); in fact, allegations that he wears eyeliner have practically become an international incident. While speaking with Fox News about the administration's tariff policy in April 2025, Vance made the ignorant statement, "We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture." This did not go over well in China, with social media in the country lashing out at the vice president, specifically at his eyelashes.

Vance was called "Eyeliner Man" on Chinese social media, which was flooded with AI videos and images of Vance with exaggerated eyeliner. One AI video featured him and Donald Trump sitting together on a bed as the president applied eyeliner to Vance. A bevy of images featured Vance in full lipstick and makeup, often captioned with demeaning messages. Another AI video garnered more than 1.5 million views on YouTube alone, satirizing the Trump administration by comparing it to the former Maoist regime in China.

Even The New York Times picked up the story, translating and documenting a variety of the Chinese memes attacking Vance. In one, a cartoon character says, "Vice President Vance, I'm a Chinese peasant. Do you realize your tariff policy will lead to the soaring price of your eyeliner?"

Around Labor Day weekend of 2025, rumors spread like wildfire that President Donald Trump, after failing to appear in public for several days, was either sick or had died. When Trump returned to the media for the first time with a seemingly unrelated press conference, JD Vance was there behind him with eyes that almost stole the show. In fact, some thought his eyeliner was thicker than ever.

Tuberville: "We look forward to having the Donald J Trump Space Command Center in Huntsville, Alabama" pic.twitter.com/2JfZPPdyyQ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 2, 2025

While the eyeliner jokes returned — "Offtopic but jd vance lowkey has bangin Guyliner," wrote one X user — more people seemed to mock Vance as if he was disappointed Trump was in good health. One person wrote on X, "JD Vance is such an a**hole. He smirks at everything like he's better than the rest of us. His goal, 'trump die so I can be president.'" Another posted an image of Vance's uncomfortable face with the caption, "jd vance waking up and being informed trump did not pass away in his sleep."

California Governor Gavin Newsom has become quite the Twitter addict, gaining attention (and the ire of Republicans) for posting satirical images, videos, and comments that either mocked Donald Trump or members of the MAGA faithful. In the process, Newsom proved he's arguably better at nagging nicknames than Trump himself. JD Vance and his glamorous eyes got caught in the crossfire with a September 1, 2025, post on X, with Newsom reposting a video of Vance criticizing Trump in 2016 and calling him a fraud, among other things. Vance's position has obviously changed quite a bit, considering he became Trump's sycophantic vice president. As such, Newsom captioned the video by writing, "Grew a beard and lost his spine. But at least he kept the eyeliner."

Newsom returned to X for further lampooning of Vance later that month, on September 29, shortly after the announcement that Bad Bunny would be performing at the Super Bowl Halftime Show. That news sparked outrage among Republicans, who derided the NFL's selection of a musician who has publicly critiqued Trump and ICE. Mr. Bunny has also performed in drag (most notably in the music video for "Yo Perreo Sola"), which is often looked down upon by judgmental conservatives. Newsom used Vance as a way to ridicule the right for all this, posting the aforementioned image of the vice president in drag from his Yale days with the parodic caption, "I'm bOyCoTtInG ThE SuPeR BoWl bEcAuSe bAd bUnNy dReSsEd iN DrAg." Ah, the dignity of politics.