JD Vance seemingly wore women’s clothes in college (Drew Hallowell/Getty)

Former Bravo star and podcaster Jennifer Welch has labelled US vice president JD Vance a “failed drag queen”, in reference to alleged pictures of him in college in a wig and skirt.

During the presidential election campaign in August 2024 a photograph that people believed depicted JD Vance, then Donald Trump’s running mate on the Republican ticket, appeared on social media and quickly went viral because it appeared to show the staunchly anti-LGBTQ+, anti-drag GOP politician dragged up.

The image, reportedly taken at a party at Ivy League university Yale in 2012, shows someone who resembled JD Vance in a skirt, blonde wig and sporting thick black eye-liner.

JD Vance refused to confirm if the photograph was actually of him.

During a recent episode of Welch’s popular left-wing podcast I’ve Had It she, alongside Pod Save America host Tommy Vietor, hit out at Vance.

“He is a failed drag queen,” she said. “He wanted to be a drag queen. He couldn’t do it. He wasn’t fabulous enough. He goes off to Peter Thiel’s gay boot camp in Silicon Valley and he comes out like a sociopathic queer-eyed freakshow. You know, he’d be so much cooler if he’d just come out.”

“There’s a group of DL demon queens”

Welch went on to allege that many key figures in MAGA circles are not straight and are using Christian nationalist policies to hide their true sexualities.

“I have this whole theory, Tommy, that in the MAGA movement, there’s a group of DL demon queens,” she said. “And I think that a lot of them are mad that they can’t come out and feel pride.

“And so they browbeat everybody all day long, and then they get on Grindr at night, and then they go do gay stuff and they wake up.

“I grew up in a red state around all these evangelicals, and they think s**t like this.”

Vietor agreed with her, saying she is “so right about the repressed”.

“There’s so many people who are repressing something and then acting out in a way that is evil and cruel towards the part of themselves that they hate,” he said. “You just see that over and over and over again.”