Fact Check: Photo Shows JD Vance Wearing 'Soviet Communist T-Shirt'?

Claim:

A resurfaced photo authentically depicts U.S. Sen. JD Vance — and 2024 Republican vice presidential running mate — wearing a Soviet T-Shirt.

Rating:

True ( About this rating? )

In late July 2024, as the U.S. presidential race heated up, a photo many claimed to depict Republican Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance in a shirt with a hammer and sickle – a communist symbol representing proletarian solidarity — spread online . The CCCP partially visible underneath the hammer and sickle is Cyrillic and stands for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (known in English as the USSR).

(X user @clliday)

An X user originally resurfaced the photo along with several others — including one of Vance passed out on a floor that we also fact-checked — on July 24, 2024, but the user did not specify where photos originated. They quickly went viral, spreading across multiple platforms . One company even started selling T-shirts called " Jd Vance Communist Tee Shirt-Unisex T-Shirt" for $19.95.

"Meanwhile two wrestlers and an Irish man with suspenders stand next to him," one X user commented on the photo. "Maybe it's Halloween?"

We looked into the claim and found that while the exact origin of the photo is unclear, the person in the photo is indeed Vance. We spoke with members of Vance's team over the phone, and they confirmed that it was a Halloween costume of WWE wrestler Nikolai Volkoff , although they were unable to confirm when the photo was taken.

Volkoff — whose real name was Josip Hrvoje Peruzović — was a Croatian-American wrestler from what was then Yugoslavia who wrestled professionally from about 1970 to 1995.

(Getty Images)

The other people pictured next to Vance in the photo wearing shirts that said "New World Order" were dressed as the American professional wrestling group of the same name.

Sources:

Nicholls, Flynn. 'Photo of JD Vance Wearing Soviet T-Shirt Goes Viral'. Newsweek , 29 July 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/jd-vance-wearing-soviet-shirt-goes-viral-1931471.

'Nikolai Volkoff'. WWE , http://www.wwe.com/superstars/nikolaivolkoff . Accessed 1 Aug. 2024.