Democrats have been claiming for weeks that JD Vance behaves “weirdly” around women.
Now DailyMail.com has unearthed a decades-old photo that doesn’t help the Republican vice presidential nominee debunk that characterization.
It was a joke – and there is real meaning behind it – but it’s still not a good idea given the other claims that have been made about Donald Trump’s choice for his number two.
The photo shows Vance, then 18, in a men’s room, watching three girls pretend to use the urinals.
The photo appeared in the 2003 yearbook of Middletown High School in Ohio, when Vance – then known as JD Hamel – was a senior.
DailyMail.com has discovered a decades-old photo showing JD Vance posing with three female classmates at the urinals of the boys’ bathroom during his senior year of high school in Ohio
The photo appeared in the 2003 yearbook of Middletown High School in Ohio, when Vance – then known as JD Hamel – was an 18-year-old senior
The yearbook itself gave no explanation as to why the three girls were in the bathroom, or why they had to have their picture taken with Vance.
But now one of the three has explained to DailyMail.com what the meaning is behind the surprising photo.
One of the women, who did not want to give her name, said she wanted to show the power of the girls on that year’s student council.
“We thought it would be funny,” she added.
“Most of the time it was all male officers, and we were evenly distributed, so it was actually the opposite.”
The photo showed the four most important officials of the student council: the chairman, the vice-chairman, the secretary and the treasurer.
Ironically, Vance was vice president, the position he now aspires to in the federal government.
Vance’s team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While the photo was intended as a lighthearted look at school life, it reinforces the feeling that Vance, now 40, needs to put an end to this situation.
The first-term senator from Ohio has faced continued criticism since Donald Trump chose him as his running mate on July 15.
Democrats have eagerly seized on his old comments, which reinforce the impression that he doesn’t know how to deal with women.
One of his most infamous statements was when he said that the country was “basically run by a bunch of childless cat ladies.” He cited Kamala Harris, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Pete Buttigieg as examples, who “are unhappy with their own lives and the choices they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country unhappy too.”
“The entire future of the Democrats is determined by people without children,” he claimed, failing to mention that Harris and Buttigieg have both adopted children and that AOC, at 34, is still of childbearing age.
Eight-time Oscar-nominated actress Glenn Close — who played Vance’s grandmother in the film adaptation of his memoir Hillbilly Elegy — posted a photo on Instagram of herself holding her cat Eve.
“Eva would have left a bleeding mouse head in the bed of anyone who criticized any lady with a cat!” the mother of one wrote.
Critics have also noted that Vance supports the government in monitoring women’s pregnancies.
“He has consistently shamed families and mothers who prioritize their careers and choose to wait to start a family,” one said.
“Vance has made disturbing comments about his ‘effect on women’ and has a history of making judgments and offensive assumptions about the women in his life,” the source added.
Democrats point to the time when, at age 14, he was asked to name a political issue close to his heart, and he chose abortion.
Glenn Close – who played Vance’s grandmother in the film version of his memoir Hillbilly Elegy – responded to his comments in an Instagram photo of her with her cat Eve
Vance’s Democratic opponent, Tim Walz, was the first to call Vance and Trump “weird” and “creepy.” The vice presidential nominee is seen with nominee Kamala Harris at their rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin last week.
This photo, which reportedly shows JD Vance wearing a blonde wig and what appears to be a long skirt, has gone viral online
He still calls himself “100 percent pro-life” and advocates for a federal limit on abortion. In cases where women want to terminate their pregnancies because of rape or incest, he says, “two wrongs don’t make a right.”
It was his vice presidential opponent, Democrat and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who first coined the word “weird” for Trump and Vance.
He called the pair “creepy” and “weird as hell.”
In an earlier interview, he said, “These guys are just weird. They’re running for the he-man misogynist club or something. That’s what they’re after. That’s not what people are interested in.”
The comments have since sparked a fierce campaign by critics and internet sleuths to ridicule and dig up dirt on Vance, including a photo that went viral in which Vance was allegedly dressed as a woman and wearing a blonde wig.
This photo is said to date from his time at Yale Law School.
Vance responded to the criticism, telling CNN’s Dana Bash that the insults are “essentially schoolyard bullying.”
“They are calling Americans names instead of actually telling Americans how to improve their lives,” he said.
“I think it’s weird, Dana, but look, they can call me whatever they want.”
He then said that the Democrats’ use of the word “weird” had less to do with him and Trump and more to do with the fact that his opponents “are uncomfortable in their own skin, because they are uncomfortable with their policy positions vis-à-vis the American people.”
But Democrats say there have been so many examples of Vance being uncomfortable talking about women’s issues that the accusation of queerness is justified.
Democrats have cited Vance’s tendency to criticize women for working instead of raising a family as an example of his out of touch with women’s issues.
JD and Usha Vance with two of their three children Ewan and Vivek
As an example, they cite his tendency to criticize women for working instead of raising a family.
“If your worldview tells you that it’s bad for women to become mothers but liberating for women to work 90 hours a week in a cubicle at the New York Times or Goldman Sachs, you’ve been hoodwinked,” he said in 2022.
And the Harris camp even claims that he advocated that women should stay in unhappy or even abusive marriages for the sake of their children. In 2022, he said that the sexual revolution had made it easier for people to “change partners like they change their underwear.”
Vance has strongly denied that he meant that.
A column in his home state Ohio Capital Journal added that Vance’s “stalking” of Vice President Kamala Harris at Eau Clair Airport in Wisconsin — as he walked to her plane to get her to answer questions — is another example of his “contempt” for women.
“It was the kind of childish stunt you would expect from a fraternity boy acting like a jerk,” wrote Marilou Johanek, who described Vance as “Senator Cringeworthy.”
“The Republican vice presidential nominee appears to be doing everything he can to bolster his repulsive image as a queer character from The Handmaid’s Tale,” she added.