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JD Vance declared himself a “never Trump guy” in 2016. Now that he’s Donald Trump’s running mate, the Ohio senator’s words have come back to haunt him in the form of a viral hit on social media app TikTok.
The 22-second long audio clip was created by DJ duo Casa Di and Steve Terrell, who sampled Vance’s comments from a 2016 Vance interview with Charlie Rose when he was promoting his memoir Hillbilly Elegy.
In the clip, Vance can be heard saying: “I’m a never Trump guy. I never liked him.”
That sample was added to the Petey Pablo hip-hop beat “Freek-a-Leek” and the resulting song has proved wildly popular on TikTok, where it has soundtracked more than 8,500 videos in the last month, racking up over 40 million views in total.
The clip has also been shared by @KamalaHQ, the official account of the Harris - Walz campaign.
The song is not Casa Di and Steve Terrell’s first encounter with viral fame. Last year, they teamed up with rapper That Chick Angel for “One Margarita (Margarita Song),” a track that was also initially inspired by a popular TikTok sample.
Speaking to The New York Times, Terrell explained that the pair had heard Vance speaking in a clip and found his voice “sort of melodic in a sense.”
Casa Di, whose real name is Carl Dixon, added: “We were like, what if we put this to a catchy beat or something?”
Dixon continued: “When Kamala decided to start running, me and Steve were figuring out ways to encourage people to vote or be aware of what’s going on. This is our first time doing something as politically charged.”
In recent weeks, several politicians have joined TikTok even as a ban on the popular video app looms.
Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, Pete Buttigieg, JD Vance and Donald Trump have all joined TikTok as the race ramps up, and they hope to gain favor with younger voters. But the social media app is still embroiled in a contentious legal battle with the US Department of Justice, which is threatening to ban it entirely.
In April, President Joe Biden signed a bill that forces the Chinese company ByteDance to either sell their app or be banned from US app stores within a year. TikTok sued in return, arguing the bill unfairly singles it out and violates the First Amendment.
Meanwhile, Harris has said she’s not in favor of the ban, just new ownership.
“As the VP has said before, we don’t want to ban TikTok,” a spokesperson for Harris told NBC News. “We would just like to see a change in ownership.”
