AP Retracts Its JD Vance 'Couch Cushion Story' Fact Check, Leading Some To Jokingly Conclude The Lewd Tale Must Be True

The Associated Press has retracted its article confirming that J.D. Vance did not admit to having sex with a couch in Hillbilly Elegy, adding another wrinkle into a silly gag that has spiraled out of control in the course of two weeks.

To recap how we got here, on July 15th, Twitter / X user @rickrudescalves posted a silly joke that read, "can't say for sure but he might be the first vp pick to have admitted in a ny times bestseller to f---ing an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions (vance, Hillbilly Elegy, pp. 179-181)."

This is a completely made-up factoid about Republican Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance and his book Hillbilly Elegy that the user almost certainly did not anticipate becoming the source of breathless mainstream news coverage. Furthermore, they signaled they were joking when they replied to the tweet with the iconic Go On the Internet and Tell Lies meme.

Still, the story duped some people online, and on Monday, Know Your Meme published an article explaining that the story was a hoax. On Tuesday, Snopes then did the same, and that seemed to send the media into overdrive.

Yesterday, a deluge of websites posted their own articles debunking the trending hoax, usually citing Snopes or Know Your Meme. However, the increased intention on the hoax also led to more people insisting – usually through memes and lewd couch-related puns – that J.D. Vance had, in fact, admitted to humping a couch in Hillbilly Elegy.

Though it was clear through context clues that @rickrudescalves had made up the couch cushion story, AP, thought by some to be the gold standard for fact-checking, went the extra mile in its fact check and linked to a PDF copy of Hillbilly Elegy. There, readers can search for the words "couch," "sofa," "glove," etc. and discover for themselves that the anecdote does not appear in the book.

This should have been "case closed" on the J.D. Vance couch cushion hoax, except for some reason, AP retracted its article and removed it from the site, which only served to pour fuel on the viral piece of misinformation. According to Wired editor Tim Marchman on Twitter / X and others, an AP spokesperson told him the story "didn't go through our standard editing process."

As of now, no further information has been provided by AP about why it retracted the story. While there are many possible reasons for the retraction – including the fact that the piece's original headline, "No, JD Vance Did Not Have Sex With A Couch," is technically unprovable – the internet seems to be running with "the story was retracted because it is inaccurate."

Again, J.D. Vance did not write the salacious couch cushion anecdote in Hillbilly Elegy. However, with all the Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer-esque hullabaloo and internet momentum, it seems social media is hellbent on getting Vance to publicly deny the ludicrous story.