Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance is facing online backlash over his interaction with a Georgia doughnut shop worker, the latest in a string of food-related gaffes.
In the footage recorded by C-SPAN on Thursday, Vance is seen visiting Holt’s Sweet Shop and thanking the woman behind the counter for permission to visit, after which the woman tells Vance, “I don’t want to be filmed.”
Vance then turned to his aide and said, “She doesn’t want to be in the movie, so just keep her out of it.”
After looking at the display case of doughnuts, he said, “I’m J.D. Vance, I’m running for vice president, and it’s nice to meet you.”
“OK” was her only reply.
Register to vote: Text the USA TODAY Elections team.
More: Georgia Governor Brian Kemp endorses Donald Trump, reversing divide as Democratic victory becomes more likely
Internet call conversations are awkward, I try to help
Vance asks the people who work at the store how long they’ve been working there and how long the store has been around.
When choosing a donut, he suggested several flavours and said, “Whatever makes sense.” The video was widely shared on X, with users calling it “awkward” and “embarrassing.”
Several users, including comedian W. Kamau Bell, suggested Vance’s team should have planned the visit better.
“Fire the entire team. They clearly hate you. This is TV production basics and they failed,” he wrote in X’s post.
Just over a month into his vice presidential campaign, Vance has been in the spotlight for comments he made about eating Diet Mountain Dew and Swiss cheese at a Philadelphia cheesesteak sub. USA Today reached out to the Vance campaign for comment, but Holt’s Sweet Shop declined to comment.
Donut shop failure occurs in key battleground state
Georgia is a key battleground state, and Vice President Kamala Harris also campaigned there during her short-lived presidential campaign.
Donald Trump won Georgia by more than five percentage points in 2016, but lost the state in 2020 by fewer than 12,000 votes, or just 0.2 percentage points.
Harris has been rising in national polls since taking the top Democratic nomination from President Joe Biden.
A FiveThirtyEight average of national polls showed Harris trailing Trump by 0.6 percentage points in Georgia as of Friday, narrowing the gap from a 1.4 percentage point lead on July 30.
