Second Lady Usha Vance, wife of Vice President JD Vance, almost took a tumble down the steps of the vice presidential helicopter on October 5, 2026, with her nine-week-old son strapped to her chest. Vance was making her way down the steps with baby Alec Neel Vance strapped to her chest and a diaper bag flung over her shoulder, holding on to the railing with one hand and supporting the baby’s head with the other.
When she neared the bottom, she seemed to miss a step, leading to a massive stumble that, fortunately, did not end with a complete fall. Four service members on the tarmac of Joint Base Andrews watched the incident unfold as Vance quickly grabbed for the second railing and managed to secure her balance. Just a few short moments later, the vice president emerged from the helicopter carrying their four-year-old daughter, Mirabel, and meeting his wife at the bottom of the stairs.
The Vance family landed in Alaska, where the vice president will be hitting the campaign trail for Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican. “As you probably saw, Usha and a couple of the kids are joining,” he said to reporters on the tarmac. “This is Usha’s 50th state, which is why we are bringing a nine-week-old baby on a seven-and-a-half-hour flight to Alaska.”
“So if I give a speech tonight and I looked haggard and stressed out, that’s exactly why,” Vance continued. Alec, the couple’s fourth child, was born on July 19 at Walter Reed National Military Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The precious baby boy’s birth marked the first time since 1870 that a child was born to a sitting vice president, The New York Post reported.
Sullivan is currently in a tight battle against former Rep. Mary Peltola, who leads in the critical Senate race by 1.8 percentage points. A video clip of the helicopter stumble led to a spirited discussion on social media platform X with many asking why the military members didn’t provide some assistance when Usha started to trip.
“What the heck, why didn’t they move to help her? What if she hadn’t regained her balance? @SecWar
these warriors need to also be gentleman. Disgraceful, I don’t care what the protocol is,” one user wrote. “That the arrival details have to maintain a certain standard while welcoming the VP isn’t reason enough for failure to render aid to the Second Lady of the US! Those details are there to secure the environment where the VP is arriving into. Maybe they don’t know the Second Lady!” another said.
“You would think any woman stepping off would have a service member’s hand ready. And with a child, a service member would be ready to help if a woman stumbled. I would do the same for my wife; you would do the same for your girlfriend or mother. What’s with this no help?” someone else noted. Others wrote about how charming the second lady is and celebrated the fact she kept the baby with her instead of insisting someone else care for him.
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Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video