Former President Donald Trump's running mate J.D. Vance was widely mocked after claiming Democrats would call him "racist" for drinking—get ready for it—Diet Mountain Dew.
At a rally in his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, Vance remarked:
"It is the weirdest thing to me Democrats say that it is racist to believe, well they say it's racist to do anything. I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday, and one today, and I'm sure they're gonna call that racist too. It's good. I love you guys."
You can hear what he said in the video below.
His remarks were swiftly mocked—and the responses were hilarious.
Since Trump named him his running mate, Vance has already come under fire for a number of his statements.
Earlier, he was mocked online after his 2022 "Are You a Racist?" Senate campaign ad resurfaced and an X Community Note offered a concrete example of how he's twisted facts about his own upbringing for political gain.
In his ad, Vance omitted the facts behind his mother's drug addiction that he'd previously written about in his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, linking it to the ongoing humanitarian crisis at the southern border that has galvanized so-called "law and order" Republicans who've asserted that migrants and cartels are funneling drugs into the country and contributing to a record number of overdose deaths.
Vance has also tried to scrub his campaign website of a page that calls for "eliminating abortion." He came under fire from critics who say he's trying to trick his voters by hiding the fact he's pledged to support a national abortion ban and has argued against allowing victims of rape and incest to access abortion care.
