Is Usha Vance Starting To Feel A Little Sorry For Herself? Arwa Madhawi - Guardian

[hatrack]

There are a few people to blame for the fact that JD Vance, a staggeringly unlikable man with a supremely meme-able face, has been thrust into such prominence. The first is Peter Thiel: the tech billionaire who bankrolled Vance’s political pivot. The second is Kevin D Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation and mastermind of Project 2025, who has been an energetic Vance advocate.

And the third is Usha Chilukuri Vance, JD’s wife. While Usha kept a low profile during the Trump-Vance campaign, trailing after her other half with a smile on her face and a copy of The Iliad in her hand, JD has made her influence clear. In his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, for example, he wrote that Usha helped him navigate Yale and “always encouraged me to seek opportunities that I didn’t know existed”.

Usha has also always sought out opportunities for herself. The 39-year-old has the sort of CV ChatGPT might conjure up if you put “overachiever with political ambitions” as a prompt: Yale, then Cambridge, then back to Yale for law school, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. From there she clerked for high-powered judges including supreme court chief justice John Roberts when he wrote a 5-4 ruling upholding Trump’s so-called Muslim ban.

EDIT

They won all right, but pretty much everyone in the US now thinks JD is a loser. He has historically bad favourability ratings and there are memes of him everywhere. I have absolutely no sympathy for Usha – who is far from a victim – but I have to wonder if she is starting to feel a little sorry for herself. As she and JD wandered around freezing cold Greenland over the weekend, unwelcomed by angry local people who didn’t want to be photographed anywhere near them, did she start to suspect that aligning herself with Trump – a man her own husband once called “America’s Hitler” – might not have been the wisest choice? If not, then perhaps Usha, who has been described as a “bookworm”, needs to put down The Iliad and read the room.

EDIT/END

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/02/is-usha-vance-starting-to-feel-a-little-sorry-for-herself

[Lonestarblue]

1. She chose to marry a despicable, dishonest man. I can't feel sorry for her.

I feel sorry first the Haitians in Springfield whose lives were turned upside down because of her husband’s lies. I feel sorry for Vance’s relatives whom he used to promote himself with his book that has a healthy portion of mischaracterization and lies. I feel sorry for the women who will be forced to have unwanted children because her husband pushes anti-abortion nonsense and denigrates women as useless for anything but having babies.

I feel sorry that she chose a totally unlikable man as her husband, but that was her choice so she can just live with it.

[bronxiteforever]

5. This! A privileged person who made the less fortunate

feel pain.

Also: Usha Vance, the wife of Senator and vice presidential candidate JD Vance, has defended Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, saying that "everyone loved" working with him.
Vance, who clerked for Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, also clerked for Kavanaugh before he joined the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing became contentious when Professor Christine Blasey Ford accused him of sexual assault while in high school.

https://www.newsweek.com/usha-vance-jd-vance-supreme-court-justice-brett-kavanaugh-1934593

[dutch777]

2. When you sleep with the pigs... I often wonder if these folks really believe in what the spouse does or just...

...likes being close to whatever the power is. I get Melania I think, pure golddigger, originally anyway, ,but some of these others that are not stupid women, someone must have studied that, identified a syndrome or maybe it is just a story as old as time, good to sleep with the people with money and power even if you loathe them.

[hlthe2b]

3. She is intelligent, but ruthless in her life philosophy toward others. She deserves ZERO sympathy.

She comes from an extremist form of Hinduism that defends authoritarian governance (including Modi) as well as the worst remnants of the caste system. Indian Americans may be happy just to have her ethnic representative voice in an influential position, but I think she may end up as reprehensible as her husband and no "sympathetic victim."

[brush]

4. "...a staggeringly unlikable man...". Couldn't have said it better myself. nt

[Botany]

6. She is not a nice person. I have sympathy and support for her and J.D.'s kids but any pain and discomfort...

…. she feels is fine by me.

Usha supported Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings and clerked for
Roberts and Kavanaugh. She sells hate and disinformation for money and power.

[LymphocyteLover]

7. she clearly has messed up priorities... no sympathy from me either

[Botany]

8. As a person of color her marrying into a party that since Nixon

... that has sold racism and used the disenfranchisement
of the voting rights of people of color tells me everything
I need to know about her.

[Skittles]

9. she is every bit as disgusting as her husband, and the Trumps

thoroughly DESPICABLE people