Almost immediately after Donald Trump announced J.D. Vance as his running mate, white supremacists began attacking J.D.’s wife, Usha Vance, for her Indian heritage and being a practicing Hindu. They disparaged the couple’s interracial children, with one right-wing pundit questioning whether “the guy who has an Indian wife” would “support White identity.”
As the racist comments piled on, Trump and Vance have been mostly silent on the subject. On Friday, Vance finally acknowledged that his wife is being targeted — though he stopped short of condemning white supremacy.
“Look, I love my wife so much,” Vance told Megyn Kelly on her SiriusXM show. “I love her because she’s who she is. Obviously, she’s not a white person, and we’ve been accused, attacked by some white supremacists over that. But I just, I love Usha.” He added that Usha is “such a good mom. She’s such a brilliant lawyer, and I’m so proud of her,” and noted that “her experience has given me some perspective on the way in which it’s really hard for working families in this country.”
This comes at a time when anti-hate organizations like Stop AAPI Hate say they’re “seeing a dangerous pattern of political leaders, conservative commentators, and far-right extremists blatantly targeting South Asians.” In response to the comments about his wife, Vance could have called out white supremacy or educated listeners about multicultural households, which are on the rise in the U.S. Instead, he used his on-air time to double down on his views about how “childless cat ladies” want to ruin everyone’s lives. Sounds about right.
