Vice President JD Vance touched down at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach on Wednesday with a speech that was apparently itching to go off the rails — and, by most accounts, it obliged. Vance made a mean-spirited joke at former President Joe Biden’s expense, invoking the classic cartoon trope of an angel and a devil perched on opposing shoulders, then letting the devil win. The crowd of troops behind him, visible on camera, responded with expressions that could charitably be described as unmoved.
Vance Lets the Devil Do the Talking
Vance opened his remarks warmly enough, telling the assembled service members, “It’s amazing to be here.” He then pivoted to his anxiety about descending the stairs in front of cameras, telling the crowd he’d been focused on not stumbling.
From there, Vance referenced “the previous president” and set up what he framed as an internal moral debate, telling the audience he was “trying to be nonpartisan.” Vance said the angel on his shoulder was counseling restraint and nonpartisanship, while the devil was urging him to make a joke about Biden’s falls.
Vance said the devil “wants to talk about every time that Joe Biden fell up or down the stairs” and grumbled that the media would have treated a single stumble by Vance himself as a blockbuster story. He then went ahead and made the joke anyway — making it fairly clear which shoulder won the argument.
Troops Respond With Stony Silence
The moment might have landed differently in another venue, but the service members positioned behind Vance were not visibly entertained. Video of the speech posted by The Bulwark captured the largely blank expressions on the faces of the troops as Vance delivered his punchline — a reaction that quickly took on a life of its own online. The clip made the rounds fast, with many observers noting that the audience’s silence said more than any heckling could have.
For context, Biden did have a well-documented series of stumbles during his time in office. The most prominent came at the 2023 U.S. Air Force graduation, when the then-80-year-old tripped over a sandbag onstage. President Donald Trump has also taken aim at Biden’s balance issues in the past, though Trump’s own physical awkward moments have been noted by critics in turn.
Social Media Delivers Its Verdict
Online, the reception was equally chilly. Democratic strategist Jon Favreau offered a pointed take, describing the moment as an answer to the question of what would happen if you drained all the charisma from Donald Trump. Political group MeidasTouch summed things up with three words: “And the crowd went mild.” Former Obama adviser David Axelrod called the move “an unnecessary, gratuitous, dick move,” questioning why Vance felt the need to go there at all. Writer Erin Ryan opted for wordplay, suggesting the vice president be rechristened “JD Wince.”
Others focused specifically on the troops’ visible reaction. One commenter wrote that the soldiers’ response told the whole story, while another described Vance as a “dork” who had managed to reveal his inner self without getting any laughs in return. A user named Striggity observed that in all of Vance’s years in politics, his applause lines have never reliably generated applause. Perhaps the bluntest summary came from a commenter named Vernam Cipher: “He chooses the Devil.”
The Timing Raises Eyebrows
The speech at Oceana came at a notably ironic moment for Vance. He is currently promoting a new book centered on his late-in-life conversion to Catholicism — a faith tradition with a fair amount to say about resisting temptation and the pulls of one’s worse instincts. The juxtaposition of a vice president publicly announcing he listened to the devil on his shoulder, mid-book tour about spiritual conversion, was not lost on observers who flagged the contradiction. Whether Vance finds the irony amusing or cringeworthy remains unclear — but the troops at Naval Air Station Oceana, at least, didn’t seem to find any of it particularly funny.