Republicans Test Tim Walz Versions of the JD Vance Couch Joke And They All Suck

In the wake of the wild success of the “JD Vance f*cked a couch” joke that became so big Tim Walz mentioned it in his first speech as Kamala Harris’ VP pick, conservatives on Twitter have tried to get their own version of the joke going.

While they might get points for trying, one thing every attempt at their joke/misinformation tactic has in common is that they all suck terribly.

The original person who came up with the “JD Vance fucked a couch” joke, a Twitter user named @rickrudescalves, captured lightning-in-a-bottle with a joke that is very obviously a joke. They even provide all the information needed to debunk it, down to the page numbers from Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy.

Republicans are now trying to emulate that rare success with inelegant brute force. Like this one…

The semen stomach pump story is an urban legend that has been attributed to various celebrities over the years, which immediately lets us know they’ve got nothing so far. Even their attempt at unoriginality is in itself unoriginal.

But more than that, the joke doesn’t work because it doesn’t befit the character of the target. Unless you’re from Minnesota, you’re likely just learning about Tim Walz. So far, from our collective first impression, he doesn’t give off “chugged gallons of semen” vibes, but JD Vance sure seems like he tried to pleasure a couch.

The beauty of the original couch f*cking gag was its believability. When I first heard about it, I didn’t know if I should trust it but deep down in my bones I knew it could be true given that JD Vance is, of course, a weird little creep. Maybe someone found an old forum post where he talked about his couch fetish or something. Almost no rumor of an outlandishly embarrassing sexual act seems outside the realm of possibility for him. There is a simple and elegant believability that rings true even if we know for a fact that it is not.

Besides, most modern Republicans seem like they’re hiding some weird stuff behind their thin veneer of “Christian values.” It’s become a cultural archetype that crops up across media for a reason. There’s a lot of repression that manifests in a lot of, let’s say, fascinating behavior.

From a practical standpoint, the semen joke is way too graphic. It’s unrepeatable even if you sanitize it with words like semen rather than the more vulgar c*m. It isn’t as easily translatable into a quippy joke that can be repeated through innuendo at a rally that’s being broadcast live on every cable news network. You can’t allude to it as easily while still maintaining distance from its grossness. The mental image it conjures is not something newscasters are going to describe for CNN viewers looking up from their laptops to the TV in a café.

Other versions of the joke that also don’t work include claiming Tim Walz had sex with an animal, maybe a duck while on a duck hunt. This has the opposite problem. Too on-the-nose. They took one trait that we all just learned about the man and applied sexual deviancy to it. It feels like a bizarre version of the old Pee Wee Herman “Well if you like it so much, why don’t you marry it?!” gag but about f*cking the ducks he initially set out to kill. Lazy. Uninspired. Low effort.

It’s a free-association first idea that will get erased from the whiteboard when they eventually land on a good one, which they never will. We all see them putting in the minimal effort, collectively, out in the open. The element of surprise is dead on arrival. There’s nothing organic or genuine about it. They’re crowdsourcing and astroturfing the perfect meme, all the while ignoring why the original became a hit.

So, what’s the best course of action? Should a conservative think tank spend billions workshopping the perfect gross Tim Walz joke? Sure! But if they were smart about this, they’d do nothing. Just move on. Just admit that it’s remarkable that this Twitter joke grew beyond its sh*tpost status to become one of the defining moments of the 2024 presidential campaign and just move on.

Don’t try to recapture the magic. Don’t try to counter it, because any attempt will seem forced, inauthentic, and so sad. They don’t have the juice. The desperation has already made them reach new levels of weird—and “weird” is an allegation they’ve been having a hard time beating lately.