JD Vance says he only dressed up in an 'ugly wig' for Halloween because he 'lost a bet'

This story originally appeared on Them.

Vice President JD Vance is now claiming he only dressed up as gay wizard Albus Dumbledore for Halloween because he “lost a bet.” And if you don’t know why that’s so funny, then brother, you need to befriend more transgender women.

At a campaign rally in Rome, New York on the eve of the 2026 U.S. midterm elections, Vance noted that he had received some questions about his recent Halloween costume — a rough and fairly difficult-to-recognize approximation of the Harry Potter franchise’s most beloved mentor figure.

“People said, ‘Why did you go as Dumbledore?’” he recounted. “And I said, ‘Well, because I lost a bet with my children, that’s why. Why else would a grown man dress up in an ugly wig? Which was very uncomfortable by the way.”

Vance continued protesting too much, with a weird anti-Muslim dig thrown in for good measure: “I looked more like an Iranian sheikh than I did an American vice president in that costume.”

Why else would a grown man dress up in an ugly wig? One could very well ask Vance himself that question when he wore a cheap-looking synthetic blonde wig during a party at Yale Law School as part of an entire cross-dressed ensemble. Leaked photographs of Vance in that crude drag emerged during the 2024 presidential election cycle, which was similarly marked by Republicans betting big on anti-LGBTQ+ policy and rhetoric.

Vance himself has participated in much of his party’s homophobic and transphobic messaging this cycle, insinuating that Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico is gay and attempting to depict him as unsavory over his past expressions of support for trans youth. “Now you got to wonder what the internet search history of a man like that looks like,” he said of Talarico at an October rally.

Bear in mind this is the same politician who wrote openly in his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy about being “convinced” at the age of eight or nine that he himself was gay, only to decide he wasn’t after his grandmother asked him a blunt question about whether he felt sexually attracted to men.

Now, back to the “lost bet” of it all. Many trans women, myself included, once dressed up in drag — nylon hair and all — and then claimed we had done so because we “lost a bet.” We do this because it’s something we’ve seen in a movie once, not realizing that, in real life, people don’t really dare others to cross-dress very often. It’s just not something that occurs to them! Cisgender people aren’t really thinking about dressing up as the “opposite sex” with enough regularity or intensity to even think of suggesting that someone else do it. Which makes the whole thing not a very good cover story.

Now, Dumbledore is an elderly gentleman with long hair who wears a robe, so technically Vance wasn’t cross-dressing by wearing that costume. But by acting shameful about it, referring to the costume as a “grown man dress[ing] up in an ugly wig,” and then offering a weird excuse for his behavior, he’s certainly acting like he did something that requires an explanation. I’d like to know exactly what bet he lost. Maybe he can share that tale next.

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