Author, ex-marine and previous venture capitalist – James David ‘JD’ Vance, may only be two years into his political career, but the incoming vice president is about to become the third youngest VP in America’s history. So who is president-elect Donald Trump’s right hand man, and how did the vocally anti-Trump provocateur transition to the president-elect’s self-described “attack dog”?
Shot into the public consciousness in 2016 after the release of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis – a searingly personal memoir-come political examination of America’s disenfranchised white working class, Vance established himself as a soft conservative explaining hard truths to a shell-shocked left following the 2016 Trump election.
He was openly critical of the president, publishing explainers in outlets like The Guardian that compared Trump’s seduction of the American public with the opioid epidemic.
Around the same time, quotes from his X (formally Twitter) account read like a Trump take-down site, with clangers like “I’m a ‘never Trump’ guy. I never liked him,” and “I find him reprehensible” to “My god what an idiot,” as commonplace rhetoric. And, according to the BBC, a Facebook message to now-Georgia Senator, Josh McLaurin, went so far as to say, “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole… or that he’s America’s Hitler.”
This is why many who haven’t followed Vance’s appearances on Fox News and CNN and active Twitter (now X) presence were surprised to see him sign on as President-Elect Donald Trump’s running mate in the 2024 presidential election.
But it was in 2020 that Vance flipped from critic to courter, pursuing the Mar-a-Lago mogul through various conservative platforms and eventually earning Trump’s endorsement for his first run for office during the 2022 Republican primaries. He went on to win the race for the Ohio senate, and with it, a connection to Trump that led to the pair’s 2024 presidential campaign.
What Has JD Vance Said About Women?
Over the last five years, JD Vance has had plenty to say about women and the issues affecting them, from domestic violence and childcare to abortion.
In a now-deleted post on his website, Vance declared himself “100% pro-life”; explaining that society shouldn’t view a pregnancy or birth as “inconvenient” just because it was the result of sexual assault or incest.
He has also suggested women stay in violent marriages, criticising couples for “shifting spouses like they change their underwear”.
Vance has tweeted that universal daycare, a policy proposal that supports working mothers, is “a war against normal people.” According to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, in Australia, 54 per cent of families rely on mothers performing the majority of childcare, and the picture is similar in America.
It’s safe to assume these comments were aimed squarely at working mothers, not fathers.
He doubled down on this rhetoric, again on Twitter: “If your worldview tells you that it’s bad for women to become mothers but liberating for them to work 90 hours a week in a cubicle at the New York Times or Goldman Sachs, you’ve been had.”
So, Who Is JD Vance’s Wife, Usha Vance?
Those who are familiar with the woman married to JD Vance might be bemused by his line on working mothers.
According to Voice of America Usha’s parents emigrated from Andhra Pradesh, and she was born in San Diego. Her mother is a biologist, and her father is a professor of engineering.
Reuters reported that she attended Yale and earned a master’s of Philosophy at Cambridge on scholarship. The pair have a geeky and sweet love story; they met at Yale where Usha Vance was an editor of Yale Law Journal and managing editor of the Yale Journal of Law & Technology.
Vance wrote in Hillbilly Elegy that he “fell hard” for her when they were partnered on a class assignment. The couple married in 2014 and have three children. Vance has since attributed much of his success to her, Usha, meanwhile has enjoyed an illustrious legal career.
Since then, she has clerked for high-profile conservative Justices like Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts. Until his announcement, she was working as a trial lawyer for the firm Munger, Tolles & Olsen. It’s not Goldman Sachs, but it’s a living. In her spare time, Chilukuri Vance has served on the Cincinnati Symphony Board of Directors.
While it seems that JD Vance sees women at work as a threat to the family structure of modern Americans, he and his children have benefitted from the presumably comfortable dual income Usha Chilukuri Vance’s work has brought in.
What does this prove? Vance won’t sign up for the “family values” he believes support the American public – because they come at a fiscal cost.
It feels like, as with Trump, there’s one rule for Vance, one rule for everyone else.
Vance’s Wife & The ‘Cat Ladies’
Usha Chilukuri Vance was thrust into the spotlight when she defended her husband, author, and President-Elect Donald Trump’s VP, JD Vance.
What was it regarding? JD Vance’s ‘Childless Cat Lady’ comments.
Since Vance’s appointment as Donald Trump’s running mate for the 2024 presidential elections, some of Vance’s historic statements have been surfacing. Most notably, a comment made in an interview with Fox News in which he described the United States as “effectively run… by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable with their own lives and the choices they’ve made.” Vance was referring to Vice President Kamala Harris, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.
In light of Roe vs Wade, many may wish any collection of ladies ran the United States. Still, the comments have drawn ire.
They’ve received even more attention since Friends actor Jennifer Anniston made an impassioned response on Instagram stories, alluding to the heartbreak she’s experienced trying to conceive, pointing out that not all women without children are without children by choice. She noted Vance’s decision to vote against a bill that would protect women’s rights to access IVF treatments. “All I can say… Mr. Vance, I pray your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day. I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her too.”
Usha Vance’s Response
As per CNN, Usha Vance played down her husband’s comments in an interview with Fox News. She said the comment was taken “out of context” and had been a quip made “in service of making a point that he wanted to make that was substantive.” She said she wished the media would focus on more central points made in the interview rather than getting caught up in “this three-word phrase or that three-word phrase.”
Usha said what her husband was actually trying to say was that “it can be really hard to be a parent in this country, and sometimes our policies are designed in a way that make it even harder.” It has been pointed out that many of the policies J.D. Vance does not support including universal childcare and protection of IVF treatments do indeed make it harder to be a parent in the United States.
Of course, it is J.D. Vance’s job to communicate his political beliefs clearly, something his wife seems to have done better than he has.
This article originally appeared on Marie Claire Australia and is republished here with permission.
