@rickrudescalves hid the post within a week of publishing it, but the couch joke had already left an impression. AdvertisementOver the past week, for every seven people searching Google for "JD Vance," one person has searched "JD Vance couch," according to Google Trends. AdvertisementBusiness Insider tracked down the post's author, who we'll call Rick, in keeping with his former X screen name, @rickrudescalves. Rick is not the first person to post an absurd joke that ended up roiling political circles after flying over too many heads. As for his decision to include a fake citation in a tweet about a man having sex with a couch, Rick claims highbrow inspiration.

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Persons: Donald Trump, JD Vance, @rickrudescalves, vance, Vance fantasizing, Obama, Kamala Harris, Stephen Colbert, Vance, Rick, he's, —, Trump, Rush Limbaugh, Werner Herzog, Jorge Luis Borges, John Fowles, I've, Lyndon Johnson, apocryphally, Hunter S, Thompson, Johnson, John Oliver Organizations: Service, Business, Google, Associated Press, Trump, Pundit, U.S . Postal Service, FBI Locations: Vance's, Columbus , Ohio, English