The 11 Worst Rumors The Vance Family Can't Escape

Few people in the history of American politics have risen as high or as quickly as JD Vance. In 2016, a then-32-year-old Vance was in the midst of a fledgling career as a venture capitalist and releasing his popular memoir "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis." Flash forward to 2025, and he's wrapping up his first year as the Vice President of the United States in the Donald Trump White House. Along the way, Vance — a Middletown, Ohio native who spent his summers in Jackson, Kentucky — has made waves in both his personal and professional life, some of which may be viewed as good or bad depending on which part of the political spectrum one falls. However, not all of the reports on Vance's comings and goings, or the alleged controversies surrounding him, actually align with the truth.

The tabloid side of America's political scene has always been a source of worldwide fascination, with everything from Bill Clinton's liaisons with Monica Lewinsky to Stormy Daniels and Nancy Reagan's astrologer making headlines. Yet, some of the rumors and innuendos are, at best, a little silly and, at worst, built on complete fabrication. For his part, Vance's name, and those of his family members, from his grandmother to his wife, Usha Vance, have been linked to a multitude of rumors of varying veracity. Here are the 11 worst rumors that Vance and his family simply cannot escape.

Vance met Usha Chilukuri, a San Diego, California native born to Telugu Indian immigrants, while both were attending Yale Law School in 2013. In "Hillbilly Elegy," Vance wrote that the relationship was spurred on by their law school professor, Amy Chua. "Amy's advice stopped me from making a life-altering decision. It prevented me from moving a thousand miles away from the person I eventually married," Vance revealed, via Business Insider, of a federal clerkship opportunity he asked Chua to recommend him for. Ultimately, the Vances tied the knot in a dual interfaith ceremony in 2014, and the couple went on to welcome three children into the world. Since Vance emerged as a power player on the national political scene, though, the couple has faced rumors about the state of their marriage and a possible divorce.

A reported public spat between JD and Usha had everyone picking sides in 2025, and one year earlier, a joke TikTok video falsely reporting "breaking news" that Usha had filed for divorce from her husband made the rounds on the platform. The video claimed that Usha had retained counsel and even issued a public statement about having to divorce JD before he assumed the vice presidency. JD's failure to mention Usha in a Mother's Day post on X, her failure to make a post on his birthday, and an interview during which Usha espoused a desire to live in her home and continue her career have similarly raised eyebrows regarding their marriage.

Where the gossip surrounding political celebrities is concerned, perhaps no rumor, narrative, or theory is as apt to capture the imagination of the masses as one that involves their love lives or relationship histories, and the discourse surrounding JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, is no different. To that end, one of the strangest rumors or misinformation campaigns out there is the one that suggests that JD was married and divorced multiple times before he and Usha were wed themselves. One 2024 Threads post claimed, "Vance, twice divorced, chastised others for divorcing like changing underwear." Stories of other marriages have reached the point of discussion that mainstream media outlets and fact checkers have been compelled to set the record straight.

According to USA Today, a spokesperson for JD denied that the post had any merit, and even the commenters questioned its validity and asked for the original poster to provide a source or some kind of evidence. Meanwhile, Reuters' fact-checkers determined there was no evidence to support that version of the vice president's personal history, attributing it to the possible confusion of his statements during a 2022 interview. The VP was reportedly asked about a secret family during the vetting process as a result of him becoming Donald Trump's running mate, but that was simply a matter of the interviewer doing their due diligence.

Another strange rumor that has been following Vice President JD Vance around since the run-up to the General Election is that the former Ohio senator wears eyeliner or some other kind of cosmetic product around his eyes. Social media platforms like X are flush with posts, memes, passionate comments, and even arguments about Vance's alleged use of eye makeup. Even former Republican congressman George Santos, who has a shady side of his own, felt compelled to address the eyeliner rumors, writing via X in 2024, "Vance does NOT use eyeliner. I've met him in person before he was a senator and I can confirm he has long eyelashes and they cast a shadow on his waterline when in studios full of lights." To get to the bottom of the rumor once and for all, Elle consulted a panel of beauty experts, but the results probably did little to quell the rumor mill.

"Okay, I'm not saying he's wearing eyeliner, but there might have been a lash tint involved," opined celebrity makeup artist Joseph Carrillo. Added celebrity makeup artist Troy Surratt: "Based on what we've come to know about JD Vance ... I find it hard to believe that he would let a makeup artist anywhere near his lashes." In any case, chatter about Vance using eyeliner is likely to continue for as long as he remains in the public eye, aided in no small part by viral photos of him dressed in drag. The eyeliner rumors have even sparked a glam trend.

Regardless of how one feels about Vice President JD Vance or his politics, there's no denying the fact that his 2016 memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis," was something of a phenomenon. The tome attracted so much attention with its sordid tales of Vance's Appalachian family that it inspired a Ron Howard-directed feature film produced by Netflix and starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close as Vance's mother, Beverly "Bev" Vance, and grandmother, Bonnie "Mamaw" Vance, respectively (Gabriel Basso played the future vice president). One of the wilder stories told by Vance in the book was one that saw "Mamaw" set her husband ablaze using gasoline after threatening to kill him if he continued to come home drunk.

While JD Vance did indeed write about such an incident (which can't be said about some other things out there attributed to him and his book), a family member apparently believes that the actual story was somewhat less dramatic. Said Vance in a 2016 Hoover Institution interview (via Snopes): "When I was talking with family later, someone said, 'You know, JD, I think maybe you didn't get that story quite right.' I think, 'Oh no, what detail have I messed up that I put in the book?'. And he said, 'I think it was lighter fluid, not gasoline.'" What exactly happened between the VP's grandparents, we may never know.

One of the downsides of being a famous politician at the highest levels of what is arguably the most powerful influential government in the world is that everything you say can be analyzed, interpreted, and spun to fit with the narratives crafted by those who perceive it. JD Vance is hardly immune to having his words twisted — or at the very least, misinterpreted — by pundits, supporters, casual observers, and political rivals alike. Such was the case when he interviewed with conservative media personality Tucker Carlson during the General Election. Vance introduced his dog, Atlas, during the interview, and made light of internet rumblings he had seen that people on social media had claimed that his campaign rented a dog for him to make him appear to be a dog lover.

Vance's comments were spun by some on social media as an admission of the dog-renting scandal (if you can call it that). Posts including a picture and partial transcript of the exchange between Vance and Carlson made the rounds on various platforms, with their words tweaked slightly to make it appear as though Vance was confirming that the dog had been rented. However, those posts were debunked by fact-checkers, and a Vance spokesperson reportedly confirmed his family's ownership of the dog.

Illegal immigration has been a hot-button issue in the U.S. for decades, but Donald Trump has made the situation at the nation's borders a key plank of two presidential campaigns and the administrations that resulted from them. To that end, Trump issued an executive order at the beginning of his second term in the Oval Office that sought to curtail birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants who are born in the country. While the executive order has faced legal challenges, and it only applies to babies born after February 19, 2025 (in other words, it's not retroactive), that didn't stop social media users from spreading rumors and misinformation about Usha Vance's status, claiming she would lose her U.S. citizenship and be forced to leave the country.

Read a viral post on Threads: "Vice President JD Vance's wife will have her citizenship revoked if Trump signs his executive order banning birthright citizenship. Neither of her parents were U.S. citizens at the time of her birth." A post featuring the same verbiage also appeared on X, where it was viewed more than five million times. However, users with even a basic knowledge of the law or the 14th Amendment of the Constitution were quick to point out that the assertion about the Second Lady's citizenship was untrue.

Twisting a politician's words, or those of their spouse, to change the timbre of their statements or misrepresent their true feelings is one thing, but using cutting-edge technology to convincingly fabricate footage of them saying whatever you want them to is on an entirely different level. And in the age of ChatGPT, Sora, and other artificial intelligence platforms, the faked footage can look nearly identical to legitimate recordings. In 2025, an AI-generated deepfake video using real footage of Usha Vance speaking at the 2024 Republican National Convention as its basis proliferated on Instagram and other social media platforms. In the video, Vance appears to make statements about dissatisfaction with her marriage and role as the vice president's wife. 

"I regret marrying JD Vance. You call me the wife of the vice president, but those words only bring me shame, not an ounce of glory. What I wear, what I say, and how I laugh all depend on his mood, even if I feel repulsed inside," Vance is made to say in the AI-generated video. "This marriage isn't about love. It's a performance. I'm like a marionette, and every word I say has to follow his script. The scariest part is that I don't even have the right to question. When will this kind of life end?" While the video has been debunked as an AI hoax, some commenters stated that they believe the deepfake statement to be true.

Although "Hillbilly Elegy" is stuffed from cover to cover with wild Vance family stories that are either true or potentially true, some social media users and internet commenters have seen fit to spread completely made-up stories that are even wilder while claiming that they, too, were hewn from JD Vance's popular memoir. One such false attribution claimed in 2024 that Vance had written in the book about having simulated sexual intercourse with a couch. Silly though that rumor was, it picked up steam among social media users and was blown up exponentially when the Associated Press briefly posted a fact-checking article about the story (that article was subsequently removed). It gained an even larger audience when late-night host Stephen Colbert referenced the fact-check during his monologue.

"I want to salute the Associated Press for their report today, 'JD Vance did not have sex with a couch,'" he said (via "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert"). Colbert further joked about the specificity of some of the online discussions, with one X post reportedly stating that Vance placed a rubber glove between the cushions when he did the deed. While the claim is ridiculous and unbelievable, and it has been fact-checked by some major outlets, one can't help but wonder how many people out there still believe Vance's love of upholstered furniture runs that strong.

One of the first orders of business for an incoming administration in the executive branch of the U.S. government is to establish relationships with other world leaders, a group that also includes religious leaders. To that end, Vice President JD Vance met with members of the leadership of the Catholic Church at the Vatican just a few months after he and President Donald Trump took office in 2025. It was an important meeting, given the church's status as the largest Christian church in the world and Pope Francis' frequent clashing with Trump over his administration's approach to immigration. However, when Vance arrived in Vatican City, it wasn't the pope whom he met with initially, but rather Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Foreign Minister Archbishop Paul Gallagher.

That development led to reports that Vance was snubbed or brushed off by Pope Francis, something that Vance's political opponents latched onto. Wrote Democratic strategist Mike Nellis, via X, "Pope Francis snubbed JD Vance and sent someone else to lecture the VP on immigration. Damn." However, Pope Francis ended up meeting with Vance (who converted to Catholicism in 2019) the following day, engaging in what the Vatican characterized (via Politico) as "an exchange of opinions on the international situation." The delayed meeting may have had more to do with the pope's health than anything; he died at the age of 88 the day after meeting with Vance.

Like anyone in his position, JD Vance has made a lot of claims about himself, his accomplishments, his family, and the history thereof as he has risen up the political ladder, many of which appeared in "Hillbilly Elegy." One such claim about his genealogy in particular is that he is of Scots-Irish descent. In his book, Vance wrote (via Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter), "To understand me, you must understand that I am a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart." However, researchers from the Vance Family Association (which studies the surname's history) have their doubts about whether the vice president is, as he appears to believe, directly related to the Reverend John Vance, who emigrated from Scotland to Ireland in the early 17th century.

"We know they [JD Vance's ancestors] were from Ireland before the U.S., but there's no evidence they were from Scotland earlier," said Dave Vance, president of the Vance Family Association (via The Sunday Times). "The short version is that although it is possible that JD Vance's surname origins are also originally from Scotland, we do not believe he descends directly from the John Vance." A genealogy that presents a different path was instead presented by the organization. Nevertheless, the vice president has made the Scots-Irish mythos part of his political brand.

One can't rise up the political ranks to the highest levels of a national government without having their name attached to some conspiracy theory or other by the tinfoil hat crowd, and Vice President JD Vance is no different in that regard. These days, the Jeffrey Epstein saga, the truth about Jeffrey Epstein's island, the way in which the late financier turned convicted sex offender and alleged human trafficker died, and the documents related to Epstein's case and alleged clientele, remain hot-button issues among conspiracy theorists, and Vance has been linked to the situation via a series of false social media posts. 

A Facebook post reading, "WASHINGTON — A bombshell Dept. of Justice report leaked on Sunday reveals that Vice President JD Vance was the last person to see Jeffrey Epstein alive. According to the report, Vance visited Epstein in his prison cell on August 10, 2019, shortly before the disgraced financier was found dead," began making the rounds in 2025, and similar posts have appeared on other platforms, too. However, that post didn't come from a legitimate reporter or outlet, but rather from "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" creator and comedian Andy Borowitz, who publishes a satirical column known as "The Borowitz Report." That hasn't stopped some observers from running with the rumor as if it were true, though.