Request:
A photo shared online in December 2025 purportedly showed US Vice President JD Vance arguing with his wife, Usha Vance, in a restaurant.
Rating:
Rating: False
In December 2025, an image circulated on social media purportedly shows US Vice President JD Vance arguing with his wife, Usha Vance, in a restaurant.
The image appeared to show JD Vance wearing a white shirt and a stern expression while sitting in front of Usha Vance. One Facebook user who shared it (archived) wrote:
It seems that things are not so good in Republicanistan. Usha is a liberal. It always was. Apparently they were having and [sic] an argument strong enough to quiet the restaurant. Why are you wearing a tee shirt?
The image circulated elsewhere on Facebook and X (archived here and here). In short, it was false.
After Snopes initially published his story, YouTuber Keith Edwards reached out to confirm that 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 in the same way. A reverse image search did not lead us to any earlier version of the fabricated image.
JD Vance himself seemed to support the conclusion that the image was a fake in a December 9 X (archived) post, responding 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 fight hard with my wife”.
We also ran the image through three AI detection platforms: Beehive, Sightengine and Image Whisperer. Sightengine estimated a 97% probability that the image was generated by AI, while Image Whisperer concluded with “high confidence” that it was generated by AI.
Hive, however, flagged the image as “unlikely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content.” It should be noted that these tools are not always accurate and their results should be interpreted with caution.
Prior to Edwards’ confirmation, the team at GetReal Securitywhich specializes in digital media authentication, also analyzed the image for Snopes.
Only Faridco-founder of GetReal and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told us that the low quality of the image made the forensic analysis difficult. However, the team found “biometric anomalies” that suggest the image “could be generated by AI or is simply a photo of someone who looks like [JD] Vance.”
“In particular, the facial features in the image do not match contemporary images of Vance,” Farid added. Contemporary images are photographs taken around the same time that are used to verify the authenticity of another image.
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 generated by AI, using a specialized forensic tool that detects subtle “fingerprints” left by generative AI. Stamm said the tool “determined with approximately 95% confidence that it could not detect traces left by generative AI.”
However, he cautioned that this does not prove that 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 analysis difficult, and they changed”.the quality of the forensic traces we analyze, similar to how fingerprints at a crime scene can be tainted,” explained Stamm.
The fabricated image was circulated on the internet amid rumors of a split 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 speaker said USA Today in a Nov. 21 statement that Usha Vance “is a mother of three young children, who does a lot of dishes, gives a lot of baths, and sometimes forgets her ring.” Other publicly available Getty Images from November it showed Usha Vance wearing her wedding ring.
In a December 4 interview with NBC NewsJD Vance said the couple’s marriage is “as strong as it’s ever been.”
Sources:
X (Formerly Twitter)9 Dec. 2025, x.com/JDVance/status/1998459532977099256. Accessed 10 December 2025.
“Hany Farid | UC Berkeley School of Information.” Www.ischool.berkeley.eduwww.ischool.berkeley.edu/people/hany-farid. Accessed 10 December 2025.
“Matthew Stamm – Drexel University College of Engineering.” Drexel University College of Engineeringdrexel.edu/engineering/about/faculty-staff/S/stamm-matthew/. Accessed 10 December 2025.
PerryCook, Taija. “Authentic Photos of Usha Vance without her wedding ring?” SnopesSnopes.com, 21 Nov. 2025, www.snopes.com/fact-check/usha-vance-without-wedding-ring/. Accessed 10 December 2025.
Stahl, Jay. “Usha Vance, Missing Wedding Ring, Belongs to Herself First.” USA TODAY2025, www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/11/21/usha-vance-melania-trump-no-wedding-ring/87399269007/. Accessed 10 December 2025.
Gomez, Henry J. “JD Vance Says His Marriage to Usha Is ‘As Strong As It’s Ever Been.’ NBC News5 Dec. 2025, www.nbcnews.com/politics/jd-vance/jd-vance-marriage-usha-strong-rcna247419. Accessed 10 December 2025.
Updates:
December 10, 2025: This story has been updated to include a comment from Matthew Stamm, associate professor at Drexel University.
10 December 2025: This story has been updated to include confirmation from a YouTuber who created the image as a thumbnail for an October 2025 video. He described it as fake. As such, we have added a rating to this story.