Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) on Saturday praised a New Jersey woman for allegedly verbally attacking an election worker who asked for her to remove her Donald Trump gear just days after a Texas man in a MAGA hat reportedly punched an elderly man who made a similar request while working at a voting location.
“What a patriot,” wrote Trump’s vice presidential pick, who quoted a post about the story that’s since been deleted on X, formerly called Twitter.
The story stemmed from a Reddit user who took to r/Democrats, a forum on the social media website, to describe a woman wearing Trump gear at a polling site, prompting workers to tell her she couldn’t wear it (it’s illegal to wear political merchandise within 100 feet of a voting location in the Garden State).
“She calls one poll worker a d*ckhead and rips her shirt off. She told another poll worker to ‘suck her c**t’ and this is the reason she votes Trump,” wrote the Reddit user, who noted that a “no political merch” sign was posted at the site.
“Can we please defeat these people?”
The alleged encounter arrives amid concerns that election workers will face more threats this year than in years prior.
HuffPost has reached out to the Trump-Vance campaign, which was not immediately available for comment early Sunday morning.
The Reddit user who described Saturday’s polling site episode also shared a photo presumably of the woman, who is shown wearing a bra and no Trump gear at the voting location.
The user wrote that they voted early with their husband at a polling site in a “purple town” and “blue county” located in New Jersey, according to a separate post.
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It’s unclear exactly where the encounter took place.
Roughly 38% of local election officials have reported experiencing “threats, harassment or abuse,” while 62% noted that they were worried that politicians would try to interfere with workers’ jobs, according to a survey reported by the Brennan Center for Justice in May.
In the past week, a Pennsylvania man was charged with an alleged threat to “skin” and kill a state party official, a California man faced charges over the bombing of a courthouse and an Arizona man pleaded guilty to committing a terrorist act and criminal damage tied to shootings at a Democratic Party office.