Are Donald Trump and JD Vance supporters now carrying around specimen cups of Vance's semen marked "JD Vance Full Family Kit" to "mock democrats who can't start families" as shown in a series of photos being spread online? No, that's not true: Several aspects point to this being an election year prank or stunt. The photos were taken at an event that took place two weeks before they were released in batches almost simultaneously in at least three different places without any other photos or coverage appearing during the time in between. The first account that posted the photos appears to have used an AI-generated avatar and reflections in some of the photos suggest several of the pictures were taken by the same photographer, all of which indicates this is not an authentic movement springing organically from within the MAGA movement.
The series begins with three images posted (archived here) on X at 4:36 p.m. EDT on August 17, 2024, by the account Camille Thompson, @UsaCamy. It was captioned:
This is some weiiiiiird stuff! Trump Supporters are carrying around cups of JD Vance's sperm. 'Weird Republicans' mock democrats who can't start families with cups of JD Vance's semen. #weird #jdvance #family #women #maga #KamalaHarris2024 #biden
This is how the post looked at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue Aug 20 22:17:38 2024 UTC)
First batch of photos
These three pictures appear to be the first images released on social media [numbers added by Lead Stories for clarity]:
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with X screenshots taken on Tue Aug 20 22:42:41 2024 UTC)
Second batch of photos
Three minutes after the first batch was posted on X, four photos were posted on Reddit's r/democrats (archived here) at 4:39 p.m. on August 17, 2024, by u/pellebeez. Three new images were introduced (pictured below, numbers added by Lead Stories) and image 1 from the first batch was repeated. The post is captioned:
Pulled from twitter - Yall, this stuff just KEEPS GETTING WEIRDER! My god, JD Vance Sp€#m cups for sale to mock childless women!
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with X screenshots taken on Tue Aug 20 22:42:41 2024 UTC)
Third batch of photos
At 5:11 p.m. on August 17, 2024, another batch of five photos was posted to Reddit's r/WhitePeopleTwitter by u/wrapityup. The post was captioned:
If this isn't weird I don't know what is
The first image in the post is a screenshot of the @UsaCamy X post (below left), which gives the impression that this post shares content that has already posted elsewhere online. The post also includes stand-alone copies of image 1 from the first batch, and 4, 5 and 6 from the second batch. But one more photo (7 pictured below center) is added in this group.
When Lead Stories checked the posting history of u/wrapityup, one more photo was surfaced, another original never-before-encountered image (8, pictured below right) was posted in the comments of their thread at 6:17 p.m. on August 17, 2024. This photo does not appear to have caught on and spread across social media platforms as have the others. At the time of writing, reverse image searches return no duplicate copies of image 8 posted elsewhere.
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with X screenshots taken on Tue Aug 20 22:42:41 2024 UTC)
Not AI generated or digitally edited
Lead Stories set out to identify where these photos were taken. They all appear to have been taken at one event in Atlanta, where there was a Trump rally on August 3, 2024. Many people were standing on line in the parking lots and sidewalks around the Georgia State Convocation Center (a YouTube video posted August 5, 2024, shows August 3, 2024, lines near the blue lot before the rally). Some notable Atlanta buildings appear in the background of the photos: the Richard B. Russell Federal Building (compare to here) and Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center appear in image 4, the old Ramada Plaza Hotel at 450 Capitol Ave. SE and the Georgia Bulldogs G appears in image 6, and the parking garage of the Georgia State University Convocation Center appears in image 8.
Technically these images are authentic, meaning they are not AI generated and not digitally edited. Lead Stories tested image 9 with two AI-detection platforms, HiveModeration and TrueMedia (results pictured below). Hive determined that there was only a 0.3 percent likelihood that the image was AI generated, while truemedia.org returned an uncertain result "because it contains too many faces, which is outside our focus."
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with Hive Moderation and Truemedia.org screenshots taken on Wed Aug 21 14:27:15 2024 UTC)
Photographer's reflection in sunglasses
Lead Stories noted that in several of the photos, the photographer was captured in the reflection of the sunglasses. Although it is not possible to make out the photographer's face -- in each instance the photographer appears to be the same person. The composite image below shows the glasses from images 1, 5, 7 and 8, notably interspersed within the three batches. Meaning one photographer's images were associated with the three different accounts disseminating them. The right-side images are details of how they appear in the original photos as posted online. The left side shows them adjusted for brightness and contrast to bring out the reflected scene. This adjustment was done manually with Adobe Photoshop image adjustment tools and was not enhanced with any "smart filter" or AI.
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with X and Reddit screenshots taken on Tue Aug 20 22:42:41 2024 UTC)
Questionable authenticity
Although the images are real, the proposed narrative that this is a trend among Trump supporters does not seem authentic. If this were really happening at scale, other photos would have surfaced, and many people would be talking about it. That photos were taken on August 3, 2024, and then held for two weeks only to spontaneously appear on August 17, 2024, within minutes of each other but split among several social media platforms from accounts posting anti-Trump content, points to a coordinated action.
News reports about these posts have nothing from the people in these photos. At least three articles state that cups of semen were worn hanging on lanyards, but Lead Stories has not seen evidence of that in any photos. The-express.com wrote on August 18, 2024:
Images have emerged of Republican event-goers holding plastic cups, some dangling from lanyards around their necks, adorned with pics of Trumps' running mate and the label 'JD Vance full family kit.'
Trump and Vance supporters have been photographed even holding plastic cups, or with them dangling around their necks via lanyards, that feature the VP hopeful's face and the words 'JD Vance full family kit.' Some of the cups even appear to contain some sort of liquid but thankfully no one has been able to confirm what the liquid is.
First poster has AI-generated profile photo
When this post first appeared the Camille Thompson account had a different profile photo, a head filling a square format, likely a StyleGAN image of the type seen at thispersondoesnotexist.com. After attracting a lot of attention with this post, the profile picture of @UsaCamy was changed to the "Forward" poster image of Vice President Kamala Harris. This ground zero post is currently pinned to the top of the @UsaCamy timeline. Screenshots of the post and profile image as they appeared originally can be seen in an August 19, 2024, thread by OSINT analyst Elise Thomas.
Lead Stories checked the original profile photo with truemedia.org, which found there was substantial evidence of manipulation. One of the TrueMedia tools returned a 99 percent confidence score that the profile picture was AI generated.
(Source: truemedia.org screenshot taken on Tue Aug 20 22:17:38 2024 UTC)
At the time of writing Lead Stories has not identified the individual, group or organization behind the "JD Vance Full Family Kit" stunt. In previous elections foreign players have aimed to cause division without supporting a specific political goal. For example, in 2016 the Russian troll factory fostered opposing rallies in Houston. In other cases bad actors have maintained "sock puppet" (false identity) accounts to artificially represent supportive voices, or as a straw man to misrepresent opposing views.
Lead Stories reached out to both the Harris and Trump campaigns and will update this article if we receive a reply.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on the claims about the 2024 election can be found here.
