Associated Incidents
Claim:
A photo shared online in December 2025 authentically showed U.S. Vice President JD Vance arguing with his wife, Usha Vance, in a restaurant.
Rating:
Fake
In December 2025, an image circulated on social media purportedly showing U.S. Vice President JD Vance arguing with his wife, Usha Vance, in a restaurant.
The image appeared to show JD Vance wearing a white T-shirt and a stern expression while sitting across from Usha Vance. One Facebook user who shared it (archived) wrote:
Looks like things are not so good in Republicanistan. Usha is a liberal. Always has been. Apparently they were having and [sic] argument loud enough to quiet the restaurant. Why is he wearing a tee shirt?
The image circulated elsewhere on Facebook and X (archived here and here). In short, it was fake.
After Snopes initially published its story, YouTuber Keith Edwards reached out to confirm the image was a thumbnail he created for an October 2025 video, describing it as "fake." Edwards told us he used the artificial intelligence platform ChatGPT to create the image.
The thumbnail matched the image circulating on social media. In both, the man wore the same facial expression and the woman was positioned the same way. A reverse image search did not lead us to any earlier version of the fabricated image.
JD Vance himself appeared to support the conclusion that the image was fake in a Dec. 9 X post (archived), replying to a user who shared the image with a comment that seemed to poke fun at the rumor: "I always wear an undershirt when I go out in public to have a fight loudly with my wife."
We also ran the image through three AI-detection platforms: Hive, Sightengine and Image Whisperer. Sightengine estimated a 97% probability that the image was AI-generated, while Image Whisperer concluded with "high confidence" it was AI-generated.
Hive, however, flagged the image as "not likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content." It's worth noting that these tools are not always accurate and their results should be interpreted with caution.
Prior to Edwards' confirmation, the team at GetReal Security, which specializes in authenticating digital media, also analyzed the image for Snopes.
Hany Farid, co-founder of GetReal and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told us that the image's low quality made forensic analysis difficult. However, the team found "biometric anomalies" suggesting the image "may be AI-generated or is simply a photo of someone that resembles [JD] Vance."
"In particular, the facial features in the image do not match contemporaneous images of Vance," Farid added. Contemporaneous images are photos taken around the same time that are used to verify another image's authenticity.
Matthew Stamm, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Drexel University, told Snopes that he and his doctoral student analyzed the image to determine whether it was AI-generated, using a specialized forensic tool that detects subtle "fingerprints" left by generative AI. Stamm said the tool "determined with roughly 95% confidence that it was unable to detect traces left by generative AI."
However, he cautioned that this does not prove the image is real and cannot definitively rule out AI generation. Factors such as its size, low resolution and repeated sharing on social media made the analysis difficult, changing "the quality of the forensic traces that we analyze, similar to how fingerprints at a crime scene might be smudged," Stamm explained.
The fabricated image spread online amid rumors of a rift in the Vances' marriage, which began to spread in October 2025. Photos of Usha Vance without her wedding ring taken the following month further fueled speculation.
However, a spokesperson told USA Today in a Nov. 21 statement that Usha Vance "is a mother of three young children, who does a lot of dishes, gives lots of baths, and forgets her ring sometimes." Other publicly available Getty Images from November showed Usha Vance wearing her wedding ring.
In a Dec. 4 interview with NBC News, JD Vance said the couple's marriage is "as strong as it's ever been."