Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include subsequent statements from Vance in which he declines to use the word ‘genocide’.
US President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance visited the Tsitsernakaberd Armenian Genocide Memorial on Tuesday, sharing a post that explicitly described the 1915 massacres as a ‘genocide’, before deleting the post shortly after.
The question of US recognition of the Armenian Genocide has been a subject of conversation since the beginning of the second term of President Donald Trump — on the 110th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, official US bodies declined to use the word ‘genocide’ from their statements, an omission that was quickly noticed and condemned by Armenian media and advocacy groups.
Originally, Vance shared the tweet below on Tuesday before deleting it some time later in the day.
Later, Vance reposted a different tweet — shared originally by his press secretary Taylor Van Kirk — which did not include the word ‘genocide’ or any context about the visit.
.@VP and @SLOTUS lay flowers at the eternal flame and sign the guest book on the final day of their visit to Armenia pic.twitter.com/wLtzV3TI1Y
— Taylor Van Kirk (@VPPressSec) February 10, 2026
Twitter users quickly took note of the discrepancy between the two messages, accusing Vance of deleting the post to appease Turkey.
Later, Vance spoke to the media for a last time before he left for Azerbaijan. A reporter asked him why he had visited the memorial, and Vance said it was an ‘important site’ but again declined to use the word ‘genocide’.
The abrupt turnaround follows the social media firestorm that accompanied the omission of the word ‘genocide’ on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day in 2025.
‘Today we commemorate the Meds Yeghern, and honor the memories of those wonderful souls who suffered in one of the worst disasters of the 20th Century’, the White House’s statement at the time read.
‘Beginning in 1915, 1.5 million Armenians were exiled and marched to their deaths in the final years of the Ottoman Empire. On this Day of Remembrance, we again join the great Armenian community in America, and around the world, in mourning the many lives that were lost’, the post continued.
The Armenian phrase Meds Yeghern, which means ‘great crime’, has often been used to refer to the Armenian Genocide by US politicians who likely have wanted to avoid stating the word genocide directly.
In 2021, former President Joe Biden became the first US president to use the word genocide when referring to the massacres by the Ottoman Empire that resulted in the deaths of some 1.5 million Armenians.
Prior to that, former President Barack Obama had used the word genocide to describe the killings — before he became president — but then backed away when he took office, instead opting to use the term Meds Yeghern.
Biden’s official recognition of the Armenian Genocide followed twin votes by the Senate and House of Representatives in 2019, during Trump’s first term.
After the Senate voted to recognise the genocide, Trump’s State Department issued a statement saying that the administration’s position on the matter had ‘not changed’, and instead said the killings were ‘one of the worst mass atrocities’.
When asked why the word was omitted, National Security Council spokesperson James Hewitt said, ‘these horrific events were one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century [...] That is why the US government acknowledges that 1.5 million ethnic Armenians were deported, massacred or marched to their deaths in the final days of the Ottoman Empire’.
Yousef Bardouka
