Vice President JD Vance was attempting to fire up the crowd in Greensboro, North Carolina, while campaigning for Republican Senate nominee Michael Whatley, against the “far-left,” when, apparently overcome by the moment, he accidentally dubbed them the “fart-left.”
“And because we need somebody who will actually fight back against the ‘fart left,’ we need Michael Whatley in the United States Senate,” Vance said to applause.
It was an obvious slip of the tongue, but Vance refused to let the moment pass quietly. Instead, he immediately corrected himself, assured everyone he “usually” doesn’t misspeak, and then spent considerably more time explaining that he hadn't actually intended to say “fart-left.”
He even took a swipe at the “fake news” for supposedly making too much of his unfortunate word choice.
“I promise that was an accident,” he continued. “So to the fake news, who will accuse me of bad language, I promise I did not mean to call them the ‘fart left.’ I meant to call them the ‘far left.’”
In other words, Vance accidentally made a fart joke and then gave it an encore, a postgame analysis, and its own media strategy. Somewhere, a middle-schooler is wondering why the vice president is stealing his material.
Wow, he really owned the libs there. Don't you feel owned? The vice president of the United States called us farts. He sure got us there.
