That's a child preacher, not JD Vance, in 1980s Oprah clip | Fact check
The claim: Video shows teenage JD Vance preaching on Oprah Winfrey’s show
A July 28 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) includes a decades-old clip of a boy on The Oprah Winfrey Show shouting a Bible verse.
“JD Vance footage when he was a teenager,” reads text in the video.
The post was shared more than 20,000 times in 10 days.
More from the Fact-Check Team: How we pick and research claims | Email newsletter | Facebook page
Our rating: False
That's not Vance in the video. It's Duffey Strode, a former child preacher.
Video shows former child preacher Duffey Strode, not Vance
Vance, a 40-year-old senator from Ohio, was picked as former President Donald Trump’s running mate. He was raised nominally evangelical before identifying as an atheist, converting to Catholicism in 2019 and portraying himself as a fighter for Christianity.
But that’s not Vance in the video with Winfrey. That’s Strode, who made headlines in the 1980s by preaching outside his North Carolina school.
Fact check: Oprah did not fly plane to Epstein's island; her students weren't kidnapped
The 68-second clip shows Winfrey watching with microphone in hand as the boy screams a Bible verse to the audience before struggling to explain its deeper meaning in plain English. It appears as part of a longer video of Strode's appearance on Winfrey's show posted by Winfrey’s OWN network. Strode started preaching at age 5 and was suspended from school in the late 1980s after he screamed Bible verses on school property, according to both an Associated Press report published by The New York Times and the video’s caption.
The claim also gets the child's age wrong. The episode aired June 14, 1988, and Strode was 11 in 1989, which means he could not have been a teen when the episode was recorded.
USA TODAY previously debunked a false claim that Vance was divorced twice.
USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook user who shared the post but did not immediately receive a response.
Check Your Fact and Snopes also debunked the claim.
Our fact-check sources:
OWN (YouTube), March 8, 2016, Does This Child Preacher Understand the Words He's Yelling? | The Oprah Winfrey Show | OWN
Oprah.com, accessed Aug. 7, Search results
The Washington Post, Aug. 28, 1988, The Devil Duffey Strode
The Associated Press (via New York Times), May 15, 1988, Boy, 10, Is Suspended From School for Preaching
UPI, Feb. 22, 1989, Preacher boy likes book about his family
Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or e-newspaper here.
USA TODAY is a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network, which requires a demonstrated commitment to nonpartisanship, fairness and transparency. Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Meta.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Oprah Winfrey clip shows child preacher, not JD Vance | Fact check