Associated Press conducts fact check on claim that JD Vance had sex with couch, deletes later

A fact check by news agency Associated Press on several posts, which claimed Donald Trump's running mate JD Vance wrote in his 2016 memoir Hillibilly Elegy that he had sex with a couch, took the internet by storm.

What is viral?

One tweet reads, “In his dreadful novel, ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ JD Vance described having sex with a rubber glove secured between cushions on his couch. Republicans chose him to be one heartbeat away from becoming POTUS. Voters in NC, the U.S. furniture capital, should be particularly horrified.”

Another post: “Can’t say for sure but he might be the first VP pick to have admitted in a ny times bestseller to fucking an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions (vance, hillbilly elegy, pp. 179-181).”

What AP said?

AP posted the fact-check on Wednesday with headline "No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch." The headline garnered attention after being shared by Ben Meiselas, co-founder of MeidasTouch, among others. However, by Thursday morning, the headline had been removed from the AP's website.

AP's fact check found that "Hillbilly Elegy" does indeed mention "couch" or "couches" 10 times, but only in reference to them being used for mundane reasons, such as sitting or sleeping. The words "glove" or "sofa" do not appear anywhere in the book, the AP noted.
In a statement to website Salon, an AP spokesperson confirmed that the article had been retracted.

"The story, which did not go out on the wire to our customers, didn't go through our standard editing process," the spokesperson said. "We are looking into how that happened."

How internet reacted?