The vice president has found a new way to handle hecklers, and it comes with a curse word, an apology to the kids in the room and a growing number of conservatives who think it’s an act.
Protesters interrupted Vice President JD Vance at both of his campaign stops on Monday, Oct. 26, 2026 — first inside an airport hangar in Belgrade, Mont., near Bozeman, and hours later at Haas Metal Engineering in Topeka, Kan., where he campaigned for Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall. Three demonstrators, two women and a man, were removed from the Montana event. In Kansas, he reached for profanity.
A War Criminal Shout Gets Drowned Out
Roughly four minutes into his Topeka remarks, while he was telling the crowd he had grown up in a town much like theirs, a protester shouted, “You’re a war criminal!” The chant that answered him — “USA! USA!” — swallowed the rest of it.
“The thing I’ve realized, having done these rallies for the last couple of weeks, is that the only chance the Democrats have is to interrupt and shut down the debate because when we have a free and open debate, the American people will realize that all the Democrats are selling is a fat load of bull****,” Vance said once the noise died down.
About two minutes later, he was describing pee-wee football teams sponsored by local businesses when another protester began screaming.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen, we have another bull**** artist. Excuse my language, for the kids,” Vance told the crowd. Then, in a somewhat odd voice, he added, “He’s out of here!” The rest of the roughly 30-minute speech — 4,037 words, by the transcript — ran without another disruption.
Kansas Turned Into a Battleground
It was Vance’s second swing through Kansas in as many months, and it came with the midterms set for Tuesday, Nov. 3, and Republicans straining to protect slim majorities in both chambers of Congress. Marshall is in a bruising fight with the Rev. Adam Hamilton, a Democrat who has never run for office. At one point Vance warned the crowd against sending Hamilton to represent Texas, then quickly corrected himself.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum spoke before him, and Vance opened by greeting Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach and state GOP Chairwoman Danedri Herbert. He praised the Trump administration’s drive to scrap diversity, equity and inclusion programs, telling the crowd another Marshall term would let Republicans tear down further what he called racial hatred and racial discrimination. He also credited Marshall with backing his push for tougher railroad safety rules after the 2023 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
A Month of Shouted-Down Speeches
Before Kansas, hecklers had already hampered six instances of Vance campaign speeches in October. On Oct. 1 in Lakeland, Fla., he called a protester a “clown” and a “Democrat plant.” In Tyler, Texas, he labeled a heckler waving a Mexican flag a “crazy person” and told him to get out in a strange voice. In North Carolina last week, a man seated directly behind him stood and demanded the release of the Epstein files; Vance answered with a remark about illegal border crossings. At a Cincinnati rally, a man in a suit threw off his red MAGA hat and shouted at him, and Vance told the crowd the man hadn’t washed his hair in about three months.
Conservatives Who Hear a Script
An earlier Politico report, published Thursday, Oct. 8, found conservatives who view the swear-then-apologize sequence as staged. “There’s something deeper about American politics where people think you can fake authenticity by cursing,” a prominent conservative commentator, granted anonymity, told Politico. The same commentator said President Donald Trump’s profanity lands differently because that is simply how he speaks, and said Vance, like a bad comedian, can’t resist tacking on a line about how his wife, Usha Vance, wouldn’t want him talking that way.
Not everyone on the right buys that reading. Garrett Ventry, a Republican strategist and Vance ally, said that is how the vice president talks behind the scenes. The Politico review of his recent remarks turned up swearing in Ohio, Georgia and Milwaukee, and at a launch event for the America.gov website, where he apologized in case there were children in the back.
Maura Gillespie, a Republican communications strategist who once worked for former House Speaker John Boehner, said profanity can make some politicians seem more relatable and can show passion. The danger, she said, is when it sounds rehearsed. “It comes across as inauthentic, and it actually ends up backfiring,” Gillespie said.