When Senator JD Vance of Ohio joined Donald J. Trump’s ticket, Republicans hoped he would help present a disciplined, populist image to voters. In the months since, another figure has done almost as much to define Mr. Vance in the public imagination as any campaign strategist: Stephen Colbert.
On a recent episode of The Late Show, Mr. Colbert devoted a long “dirty secrets” segment to Mr. Vance, stitching together real campaign moments, viral clips and exaggerated sketches into a portrait of a candidate he portrayed as awkward, inauthentic and strangely fixated on his own image. It was the culmination of more than a year of late-night jabs that have steadily turned Mr. Vance into a recurring punchline — and, in the eyes of critics, a case study in how modern comedy can shape a political brand.
The centerpiece of Mr. Colbert’s critique was a now-famous campaign stop at a doughnut shop in Georgia. In the original footage, Mr. Vance appears stiff as he chats with staff, asking a cashier how long she has worked there and responding with a flat “Good,” regardless of the answer. When pressed to choose a pastry, he offers only, “Whatever makes sense.”
On The Late Show, that scene became the spine of an elaborate parody “ad,” performed by the actor Haley Joel Osment in a heavy beard and smudged eyeliner. In the sketch, Mr. Osment’s Vance lurches through a series of outlandish encounters — interrupting customers, mangling small talk and delivering a bizarre monologue about how the “mainstream media” says he is “creepy, cringy and awkward.” The satire relies on exaggeration, but much of its sting comes from how little, Colbert’s writers suggest, needed to be invented.
The doughnut bit is one thread in a wider tapestry Colbert has woven around the senator’s image. Ever since Mr. Trump announced Mr. Vance as his running mate, viewers online have debated whether the Ohio Republican wears eyeliner, noting his dark, sharply defined lashes in televised appearances. Beauty influencers weighed in, and Mr. Vance’s wife publicly insisted they were natural. The Late Show seized the moment; every time Mr. Osment returned to play Mr. Vance, the eyeliner grew more pronounced, turning speculation into a visual shorthand for fussiness and vanity.
Then came what the show openly labeled a rumor: an online claim that Mr. Vance’s memoir contained a passage describing a sexual encounter with a couch. No such scene exists in the book, but the story spread quickly on social platforms. Mr. Colbert leaned into the absurdity, joking that debate organizers would require candidates to stand rather than sit and imagining a jealous office chair. After one vice-presidential debate, the host quipped that Mr. Vance “hasn’t been under a microscope like this since his wife asked him why the couch was so sticky.”
The jokes, however crude, have had political implications. In Democratic circles, strategists have latched onto the label “weird” — first used by Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and then amplified by Mr. Colbert — as a shorthand critique of both Mr. Vance and Mr. Trump. When Mr. Vance attempted to push the word back onto his opponents, citing an overly formal handshake between Mr. Walz and his wife, it provided more fodder for late-night montages. As Mr. Colbert put it in one segment, if a candidate has to insist repeatedly that he is not strange, the denial can become its own punchline.
The feud intensified after a regulatory controversy last year, when a Federal Communications Commission official aligned with Mr. Trump publicly questioned whether ABC should keep its broadcast licenses if it continued airing Mr. Colbert’s criticism. After the host’s show briefly disappeared from some markets, Mr. Vance described the episode as a joke blown out of proportion, insisting there had been no government attempt to silence a critic.
On The Late Show, that argument was treated as gaslighting. Mr. Colbert framed Mr. Vance as a willing defender of efforts to intimidate the press, even as he tried to claim nothing serious had occurred. The host’s writers cast the Ohio senator as “Vice President Maybelline,” a nickname that alluded both to the eyeliner jokes and to what they see as Mr. Vance’s willingness to gloss over uncomfortable facts.
All of this is happening against the backdrop of a fraught national environment, in which questions of media bias, free speech and the boundaries of satire loom large. To Mr. Vance’s supporters, Mr. Colbert is part of a liberal entertainment establishment that mocks conservative voters as much as it mocks their candidates. To his detractors, the senator’s halting retail politicking and shifting public persona — Appalachian memoirist turned Trump loyalist — make him especially vulnerable to the kind of character comedy late-night hosts specialize in.
What is clear is that the sketches have struck a nerve. Clips of Mr. Osment’s impersonation have garnered millions of views across platforms, and social media feeds regularly pair Mr. Vance’s real-life comments with Colbert’s caricature. In an age when many younger voters encounter politics first through monologues rather than stump speeches, that kind of repetition can be hard to shake.
“Comedy exposes phoniness,” the narrator of the original explainer video about the feud says at one point. For now, Mr. Colbert seems determined to test that theory on Mr. Vance — and the vice-presidential hopeful, caught between the glare of studio lights and the demands of a national campaign, has yet to find a convincing way to laugh it off.
