Usha Vance opened up about her personal life with her husband and Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance on Monday in her first solo television appearance, painting a softer image of the lawmaker.
She defended the Ohio senator’s past comments about “childless cat ladies” and highlighted the importance of family in her husband’s life in an interview with Fox News, filmed at the Vance residence in Ohio.
Sen. Vance made the comments in a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson, where he said, “We are effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they wanna make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He mentioned Vice President Kamala Harris as being part of that group.
What did Usha Vance say about husband JD Vance’s ‘childless cat ladies’ comment?
In an interview with Fox News, she said she “took a moment” to understand the context when she caught wind of the chatter.
“The reality is, JD made a quote — I mean, he made a quip, and he made a quip in service of making a point that he wanted to make that was substantive,” she said. “What he was really saying is 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.”
But instead of discussing family planning policies in the U.S., people nitpicked the three-word phase, she said.
Usha Vance noted they have friends who’ve had trouble having children. “JD, absolutely at the time and today, would never, ever, ever want to say something to hurt someone who was trying to have a family, who really was struggling with that,” she said. “I also understand there are a lot of other reasons why people may choose not to have families, and many of those reasons are very good.”
Sen. Vance in his response to the backlash said his comment was sarcastic and pointed fingers at the news media for not focusing “not on the substance of what I actually said.”
Sen. JD Vance’s focus on family
Vance’s family is central to all his decisions, Usha Vance said. Before he decided to run for Senate in 2022, the couple had serious discussions about wanting to give their three children — Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel — “a stable, normal, (and) happy” childhood. Similar conversations ensued when Sen. Vance earned a chance to be on the Republican ticket.
But they won’t put their children in the spotlight during this election cycle. At the Republican National Convention, their children “were off sightseeing in Milwaukee, which they actually really loved,” she said.
Usha Vance said family is a huge part of Sen. Vance’s platform. It stems from the support he received from his own loved ones while seeing the stability that his wife brought with her family.
“I think that JD needs family to thrive. I do,” she said. The most important thing for her husband is to be with people who love him and truly know him, she said, adding the same is true for her.
Who is the real JD Vance? Here’s what his wife said
The 38-year-old lawyer wants the American public to know her husband is “a real person,” as well as “a wonderful father,” “an excellent husband” and her “best friend.” She described him as a funny person with dorky interests.
“You look at the news sometimes and you just see this caricature of a human,” she said. “And I wish that people sometimes would pause and actually listen to the words that he says and try to understand their meaning and their purpose.”
“I think he really cares about having a good conversation, about actually changing things for people who have had a very hard time in this country, and changing it for the better, letting them have the kinds of lives that he’s been lucky enough to have himself.”
The Vance family gets used to Secret Service
During the interview, she also revealed the one thing the Vances have had to adjust to: the presence of Secret Service detail around them. “We have code names now. Our kids had a lot of fun with that,” she said.
She said she tries “not to worry too much” after the attempted assassination of Trump, and trusts “that most people ... would never think of doing anything like that.”
Although Usha Vance claimed she is accustomed to public security and negative press, she noted the one piece of valuable advice she received after unexpectedly finding herself in the spotlight is not reading the news a lot.
She said her husband is out campaigning, and “he deserves to have someone in his life who hears it straight from him and doesn’t just hear what other people are saying about him all the time.”