Did Vice President JD Vance write on his official X account that everyday Oval Office banter is worse than the leaked and criticized Young Republicans' Telegram jokes about Hitler, slavery, gas chambers and rape? No, that's not true: A viral image of the post attributed to Vance was not an authentic screenshot. It originated from a community on Reddit that publishes faked screenshots of made-up posts.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on October 16, 2025. It opened:
So wait... there is blatant Nazi rhetoric and racism happening in the Oval Office every day? You don't say
The attached image purporting to show an authentic screenshot of a post from JD Vance's government account on X continued:
All this pearl clutching over some young men joking around in a private chat! These promising young Republicans shouldn't have their lives ruined over language that is frankly very tame compared to the banter you hear in the Oval Office every day.
This is what the shared image looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at x.com/youranonnews)
In mid-October 2025, JD Vance's remarks about the contents of the conversations in a Republican group on Telegram made headlines. In part, he suggested (archived here) that the comments were made by "kids" and "young boys".
Vance did not post what social media attributed to him in the entry reviewed in this fact check on his government or campaign accounts on X.
A closer look showed that in the viral image, the follow button, which doesn't authentically include any other words, displayed a watermark pointing to a thread on Reddit named "totally real tweets":
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at x.com/youranonnews)
That page's self-description (archived here) read:
A very serious subreddit for screenshots of completely authentic tweets that are 100% really real.
On Reddit, the "screenshot" in question could be found under the caption that said: "JD downplays the severity of Telegram channels".
But a search across the real VP's account on X (archived here) showed no entries mentioning "young Republicans":
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of X.com)
One entry explicitly mentioning "Young Republicans" did appear on Vance's campaign account, but it predated the Telegram group chat controversy by more than two years:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of X.com)
