At the press briefing during his visit to Pituffik Space Base in Greenland, was the casually-dressed Vice President JD Vance asked "Why don't you wear a suit?", as a TikTok video makes it sound? No, that's not true: The TikTok clip combines authentic video from Vance's March 28, 2025 Greenland visit with authentic audio from a February 28, 2025 White House press conference. During that conference someone in the press pool asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy why he wasn't wearing a suit to the Oval Office.
The concocted video was posted to TikTok March 31, 2025 by the "Zeke Jenei on TikTok" account (archived here) with titling on the screen identifying the date as "March 28, 2025." The video of Vance at the podium carried subtitles that matched the audio:
WHY DON'T YOU WEAR A SUIT?
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Apr 16 17:18:27 2025 UTC)
The video of Vance is taken from material Forbes posted of the Pituffik press briefing, archived here.
The audio was lifted from Zelenskyy's February 28, 2025 meeting at the White House, at which a person in the press pool heckled him for not dressing up. The CSPAN video of that event, captures the fashion question at 18:37 into the recording, transcribed as follows:
MY SECOND QUESTION IS FOR PRESIDENT ZELENSKYY. WHY DON'T YOU WEAR A SUIT? YOU ARE AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL IN THIS COUNTRY'S OFFICE. DO YOU OWN A SUIT?
A full-content recording of Vance's remarks at Pituffik, posted to YouTube by Forbes, shows no such question was asked of Vance, who wore a black quarter-zip collared pullover over what appeared to be a black turtle-neck or cold weather base layer. Press questions started at 26:37 and ended at 42:40 of the recording.
No questions about Vance's clothing were asked.
Read other Lead Stories fact checks about Vance here.
