**DISCLAIMER: This article was first published in July of 2024**
The past just keeps coming back to haunt the Vance family, no matter what they try to do.
Donald Trump’s 2024 VP running mate pick has been steeped in serious controversy since the very moment the former president made the official announcement on his Truth Social platform, and it’s only gotten worse and worse since the far-right, former Trump-hating Ohio senator was confirmed at the Republican National Convention earlier last week.
No matter how hard the Trump/Vance team attempts to do damage control, J.D. Vance just cannot seem to escape his own past — and now it’s leeching into his wife, as well.
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With Donald Trump’s running mate choice set in stone now, the Washington Post interviewed several friends and colleagues of Usha Chilukuri Vance — a successful attorney, the child of immigrants, and the wife of Ohio Senator and Trump 2024 running mate J.D. Vance.
Almost all of those who personally know Usha told the publication how surprised and even appalled they are to see their dear friend and colleague going along with the hate-fueled MAGA campaign, considering the things that Usha had to say about Donald J. Trump in the past — especially when it came to the infamous January 6th Capitol insurrection, and Trump’s personal role in that attack.
Usha boasts quite the reputation for remaining relatively close-lipped when it comes to her personal political leanings. However, even she couldn’t stay quiet when she witnessed the heinous attack against this nation’s Capitol, at the incitement of then-President Donald J. Trump.
WaPo’s Peter Jamison, Beth Reinhard, Hannah Natanson, and Nicole Markus report, “Usha Vance rarely— if ever — volunteered her opinions on the nation’s bitterly partisan politics to friends and colleagues,” but even she made an exception to “express revulsion” when she witnessed Donald Trump’s violent mob of supporters storm the US Capitol building and send lawmakers fleeing for their lives, in an attempt to overthrow a United States presidential election on behalf of their Dear Leader.
One friend told the publication that “Usha found the incursion on the Capitol and Trump’s role in it to be deeply disturbing,” before adding, “She was generally appalled by Trump, from the moment of his first election.”
When it came to Usha Vance sitting in the presidential box at the RNC, that same friend described it as “surreal to see her sitting next to him last night.”
The Post reports, “Though she worked for prominent conservative judges and voted in the 2022 Republican primary in Ohio when her husband was on the ballot, she has registered to vote as a Democrat at least twice, records show: as a teenager in San Diegoin 2004 and as a law student in New Haven, Conn.,in 2010. In the fall of 2014 she registered to vote in D.C. without a party affiliation, according to elections officials.”
The publication goes on to report that when her husband made a post on Facebook in 2016, referring to Donald Trump as “cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it,” Usha linked his post in approval and commented on her husband’s “firm stand against Trump.”
Chad Callaghan, a Los Angeles-based writer who was friends with Usha Vance in college, said: “Am I surprised to see Usha speaking onstage at a major political convention? No. She’s brilliant. Am I surprised to see her there to support a man who seems to be building political power by punching down at trans folks and immigrants? Yeah, that part caught me off guard.”
The Washington Post does note in their report that, “In her speech introducing J.D., which lasted less than five minutes, Usha Vance herself offered no clues to how she was processing the moment. At a convention suffused with fervor for its presidential nominee, she did not once mention Trump.”
I don’t know about you, but something tells me that Usha Vance is secretly on our side.
You can read the full piece from The Washington Post here.
Featured image via screen capture
