Those who are following the 2024 presidential race closely might already be aware of the somewhat dramatic (to say the least) journey of Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance.
Since joining the ticket in July, Vance has faced a smattering of obstacles, from being forced to address accusations of having intimate relations with a couch, to backtracking on his previous comments about Trump, and stoking the frustrations of legions of cat ladies. Those very public battles — coupled with polls that name him the least popular VP candidate in modern history — might be enough to crystallize the fact that Vance wasn’t the best choice as Trump’s running mate (to put it mildly).
However, a recent TikTok has offered us yet another reminder of Vance’s unpopularity, even among Republican Trump supporters. If you’re disliked even by a group whose devotion to your agenda borders on sycophancy, you must be doing something wrong, as a viral video of Vance at a rally now reiterates. The clip, which is captioned “Trump’s own rally-goers are over Vance,” shows the Senator speaking to a crowd in Atlanta.
In the background, one rally attendee can be seen sporadically waving his “You’re Fired!” sign as Vance speaks, which many viewers took as a slight against the VP candidate. “It looks to me like they’re telling Vance that he’s fired,” one user commented on the clip, with another adding that “not all heroes wear capes.” Elsewhere, viewers said the sign-holder “understood the mission,” and requested immediately to “give [him] a job in the senate.”
Naturally, a figure as divisive as Vance incited some different opinions. Some users claimed that the sign-holder only brandished the “You’re Fired!” message when Vance mentioned Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris, suggesting it might’ve been aimed at Democrats. “[I don’t know] if he’s dissing her or Vance,” one person wrote, “but he’s hilarious either way.”
Regardless of the man’s intentions, the fact that it could even be perceived as a slight against Vance is a snafu in itself, on par with that time he stood in front of a sign that read “Kamala Chaos”. Seems simple enough, were it not for the fact that the “chaos” part was covered, so it looked as though Vance was speaking at a pro-Kamala rally (not even Veep could’ve conceived of gaff with that level of hilarity).
So, as new revelations around Vance continue to emerge — from comments by a previously unknown relative to resurfaced photos of him in drag — maybe we’ll see even more Trump supports confidently telling him “You’re Fired!”.