U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s office deleted a social media post that included a divisive reference to the mass killing and deportation of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, prompting the Trump administration to again decline to use the term in its official messaging.
The post appeared on Vance’s X account during an official visit to Armenia and featured a video of he and Second Lady Usha Vance walking solemnly in the rain behind two soldiers marching ceremonially with a wreath.
Highlights
- Vice President JD Vance published and then deleted a social media post that used a controversial word during an official trip to Armenia.
- The deletion reflected the Trump administration’s ongoing refusal to use “genocide” in reference to the mass killing of Armenians during the Ottoman Empire.
- Vance’s aide said the post was made in error by staff, not part of the Armenia delegation during a memorial visit.
- The deletion sparked strong criticism from Armenian-American groups and Democratic lawmakers as a surrender to Turkish pressure.
- The controversy is the latest in a line of Trump administration social media mistakes.
JD Vance stirred controversy with a social media post published during a trip to Armenia
The video was taken during an event at the Tsitsernakaberd Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan on February 10, with a Vance aide telling Reuters the message was posted in error by staff who were not part of the traveling delegation.
Above the video, the caption said the couple had attended a wreath laying ceremony “to honor the victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide.” The post was deleted around an hour later, according to Armenian news outlet CivilNet.
Turkey has historically rejected the term “genocide” in reference to the systematic killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1917, instead arguing the deaths occurred amid war. However, the International Association of Genocide Scholars has recognized it as genocide under the U.N. Genocide Convention framework since 1997.
Congress only officially recognized it as a genocide in 2019, and the first Trump administration refrained from endorsing the measure at the time. In response to a question about the deletion of the Vance post, the White House told Reuters there had been "no change of policy at this time" since a 2025 statement given by Trump on the historical incident, which did not include the word "genocide."
President Donald Trump has consistently avoided the term, instead using “mass atrocities” and the Armenian phrase “Medz Yeghern” (“Great Atrocity”)–as previous U.S. presidents had for decades prior to Joe Biden using “genocide” in an official statement in 2021.
Vance did not use the word “genocide” in his remarks to reporters during the trip. Asked whether his visit was intended to recognize a genocide, he called the events “a very terrible thing” that happened “a little over a hundred years ago,” and said the memorial was culturally important to Armenians.
JD Vance led a US delegation that met with Armenian counterparts
The post published on Vance’s account was replaced by a retweet of a message from Vance’s press secretary Taylor Van Kirk from the same event, which simply said the couple laid flowers at the eternal flame and signed the guest book.
The deletion drew criticism from Armenian-American advocates and Democratic lawmakers. The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) called the move a “disgraceful surrender to Turkish pressure” in a press release.
In the same release, ANCA policy director Alex Galitsky called the deletion “an insult to the memory of the 1.5 million victims of the Armenian Genocide.”
Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, was among the lawmakers to condemn the deletion, echoing the ANCA press release by saying it “undermines the Trump Administration’s own attempts to deescalate tensions in the region.”
A key purpose of Vance’s trip was promoting peace between Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan, which signed a peace deal at the White House in August 2025 after almost 40 years of conflict, including a full-scale war in the early 1990s.
Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a peace agreement in the White House in August 2025
The controversy was handled somewhat differently in Turkish press, with the state-run Anadolu Agency describing the memorial post as referencing the “so-called ‘genocide’” and reporting that Vance’s press secretary later shared images without using the term.
The episode is the latest in a series of social media mishaps for the Trump administration, coming days after the White House defended and then deleted a post to Trump’s Truth Social account that included a racist depiction of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes.
Following that incident, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the video as “an internet meme” and the controversy as “fake outrage,” and in the wake of the Vance post deletion denied the administration had a broader problem with its social media protocols.