Second Lady Usha Vance laughed off Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed’s latest attack on her family, answering a post that critics interpreted as insinuating that Vice President JD Vance’s grandparents would not have accepted their Indian American daughter-in-law. The remark came months after El-Sayed accused the vice president of believing that his own “Brown kids” are less American than other children. Usha responded by describing the warmth she has received from her husband’s Ohio family and saying that she would have loved to meet his late grandparents.
Usha addressed the controversy during an interview aired Wednesday on “Fox & Friends,” where she was asked directly about El-Sayed’s post and the assumptions behind it. The dispute began days earlier after JD Vance singled out El-Sayed during a campaign rally in Ohio while discussing the Democratic Party’s abandonment of working-class voters. El-Sayed is the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s open Senate seat and will face former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers in November. Their contest could help determine which party controls the Senate.
Vance told the crowd that El-Sayed had previously argued that criticism of Sharia law was rooted in white supremacy. Referring to his late grandfather, Vance said, “I’d love to go back in time and tell my Papaw that there is a man who claims to stand for working people who says not only should we have Sharia law, but if you criticize it, you’re a White supremacist.” He added, “That’s not my Papaw’s Democratic Party, my friends.”
El-Sayed responded by bringing Usha into the dispute. “So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no…” he wrote, according to Fox News. Many readers interpreted the post as suggesting that Vance’s white, working-class grandparents would have rejected Usha because of her Indian heritage.
“I mean, I have to admit, I kind of laughed,” Usha said when asked about the post. “Because yes, I never met JD’s Mamaw and Papaw, but I do know and love the children that they raised.” She identified those children as JD’s mother, aunt, and uncle, saying they had always treated her with nothing but kindness and affection. “They have never been anything but incredibly loving,” Usha continued. “I mean, his aunt is like a second mother to me, and so I have to think that if they raised children like that, they would have been loving as well.” She added that she “would have really, really, really loved to have met them.”
Watch Usha Vance’s response here:
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El-Sayed’s post followed an even more personal attack he made against the Vance family in April. During an appearance on “The Allen Analysis Show,” El-Sayed claimed that Vance would eventually have to explain his political career to his children. “Can you imagine, he’s got Brown kids, at some point he’s going to have a really awkward conversation with his kids, like, you made your career hating people who are different,” he said, according to a previous Fox News report.
El-Sayed continued by claiming to know what Vance thinks about his own children. “I love my Brown kids, and I think my Brown kids are just as American as everyone else,” he said. “JD Vance has Brown kids who he thinks are less American than everyone else.” During the same interview, he speculated crudely about Usha’s marriage, referred to Vance as having the “charisma of a doorknob” and the “aura of a toad,” and urged the second lady to “get out” of the marriage.
Usha said her own experience in Ohio bore no resemblance to the picture El-Sayed attempted to paint. “I had never been to Ohio before meeting JD. I had no idea what to expect,” she said, joking that her husband still makes fun of her for expecting the state to look like Iowa. “Whatever expectations I might have had were blown up when I got there. I mean, it’s a culturally diverse place in many ways. It has all sorts of traditions that were new to me in other ways, but the people are so welcoming. Everyone has been really loving. They are my family. They treat me like their family.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.