jd vance told a rally he's not gay. raven-symoné would like to know who asked. same, babe.

Photo: Thesavagenorwegian, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Some people get read by a Disney Channel legend on daytime television and live to tell about it. On Thursday it was the vice president's turn.

Guest-hosting The View, she turned to the line JD Vance delivered at a Tuesday rally in Tyler, Texas, where he told a supporter, on C-SPAN's tape, "I love you too, sir. In a totally platonic way, to be clear. I'm the vice president, not James Talarico." (We wrote about the rally when it happened. Talarico, the Democrat running for Senate in Texas, is not gay. It would be fine if he were.)

"Also, J.D. Vance, no one asked if you were gay," Symoné said. "You are literally just saying it out of nowhere, which makes me go hmm."

Then she took apart the premise. Republicans, she said, keep using "vegan" and "gay" as insults, when Cam Newton is a vegan and "super masculine." "And hot," Sunny Hostin added, per NewsBusters' transcript, and Symoné agreed, before adding that Carl Nassib "is gay and he's super masculine." The whole bit, she concluded, was "a dad joke that did not land very well."

Sara Haines said she "took more umbrage with the 'Talafreako,'" the nickname Vance also used at the rally, because "freak" tells anyone listening that being different makes you a target. Ana Navarro called it disrespectful to voters to think the gay thing still works in 2026.

NewsBusters, the conservative media watchdog, said she "clutched her pearls." Fair enough. But a man who answers a question nobody asked, at a podium, with a disclaimer about his own feelings, has invited the "hmm." That one is on him.