'3-in-1 J.D. Vance scandal': Daily Show writer exposes VP hopeful’s 'fake' TikTok video
Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) attempted to make a relatable TikTok in which he played a hunting video game while taking a jab at Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz. But when a comedy writer took a closer look, he found several major flubs Vance's social media team missed.
In a series of posts to social media platform Bluesky, Daily Show writer Matt Negrin did a detailed breakdown of the 2024 Republican vice presidential nominee's TikTok. In the nine-second video, Vance is seen holding a brightly colored plastic rifle next to an arcade game, which he erroneously referred to as "Buck Hunter." Negrin began the breakdown by inviting his followers to first watch the video before he explained what he referred to as a "3-in-1 JD Vance scandal."
"Hey guys, JD Vance here, playing a little Buck Hunter before a rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, also known as the closest Tim Walz has ever gotten to real combat," Vance said.
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"Here's the thing – this game is not called 'Buck Hunter.' It's called 'Big Buck World.' There is a game called 'Big Buck Hunter,' which came out in 2000, but that's not this game... No one calls this 'Buck Hunter.' People who play this game just don't call it that," Negrin explained. "I get that that seems like, really small, but like JD Vance has never played this game in his life. He wouldn't call it that if he has."
Negrin then revealed that "Big Buck World" shows the player how they're doing during each session by displaying whether they hit or miss the bucks they shot at during previous rounds. He noted that on the bottom of the console screen in Vance's TikTok, he had two consecutive misses in his shot report.
"Two misses right out of the gate! This guy hasn't even seen combat in a fake safari hunting video game," Negrin said.
The Daily Show writer elaborated that because social media posts are strategically shot with multiple takes in order to give editors a variety of videos to choose from, this particular session of "Big Buck World" was just one of many in which Ohio's junior U.S. senator failed to hit a single target. This was despite Vance being "right next to the screen," with Negrin noting that there was almost no slack in the cord connecting the rifle to the console.
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"They used this take! That means he tried to do it multiple times and he couldn't shoot a fake video game antelope," Negrin explained in the second video of his thread. "You're supposed to stand farther back. He's like, right next to it, the way that like when you're a kid and you're playing Duck Hunter and you go right up to the TV to try to shoot it, he's doing that and he still can't f—ing hit it."
Toward the end of Vance's TikTok, Negrin observed that there was an unnatural zoom into Vance's face that his social media editors added in the post-production process. He explained to viewers that at the end of every round of "Big Buck World," there are scantily clad women wearing bikinis and short skirts holding fake rifles standing next to text explaining to players how to improve their shooting technique. He then opined that the zoom was done in order to obscure those images from viewers, as it would almost certainly hurt Vance's perception among women voters.
"Here's the thing, and this is not a joke: Project 2025 wants to ban pornography, and expand the definition of pornography to include sexualized video game characters like this," he said. "So this is a game JD Vance wants to ban, and he's playing it. Because he's a hypocrite. Because he's a liar."
Watch Negrin's video breakdown by clicking this link.