Did vice presidential candidate JD Vance admit that his campaign gave him a "rent-a-dog" to use on the campaign trail? No, that's not true: Vance's full statement, which he made during an interview with Tucker Carlson, was a sarcastic acknowledgment of an online rumor. Vance also said he owned his dog before his vice presidential candidacy began.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X on September 21, 2024, that included a clip of Vance speaking with online host Carlson about his dog Atlas. The caption of the post read:
HOLY CRAP: How weird is it #1: @JDVANCE has a 'rent-a-dog'.
How weird is it #2: @JDVance admits its a 'rent-a-dog' and the dog is to '... make me seem like I'm a dog fan...'
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Sun Sep 22 17:50:34 2024 UTC)
Carlson's interview with Vance premiered on YouTube (archived here) on September 18, 2024. The portion of the interview relevant to the claim occurred at the beginning of the interview, with Vance introducing Atlas at the 12-second mark of the video. Vance starts discussing the idea of a "rent-a-dog" by noting that the concept originated online. At the 17-second mark of the video, he states:
So this is Atlas, which I found out on the internet a few weeks ago that he's actually a 'rent-a-dog' that was given to me by the campaign to make me seem like I'm a dog fan.
Vance goes on at the 32-second mark of the video:
And it's actually hysterical to hear these lefties be like 'Oh, that dog, that's totally not his dog.' And, you know, of course, we got him when he was like an 8-week-old puppy and we've been, you know, we love dogs. And he's been our little guy. But he's like so well-trained and so normal, it's like shocking to me that anyone would think that he's not our puppy ...
Lead Stories contacted the Trump/Vance campaign to request evidence of Vance's ownership of Atlas before his vice presidential candidacy. We will update this story with any relevant response.
At the time this was written, PolitiFact had reviewed the same claim.
Lead Stories has debunked several claims related to the 2024 presidential election, which can be found here.
