WASHINGTON: For moderate Republicans trying to expand the party’s outreach, it is a compelling American story: a poor white kid from a broken home, with a tormented upbringing in boondocks USA, going to Yale and rising in life after marrying a classmate, the daughter of accomplished Indian immigrants.
For the extremist MAGA constituency trying to close the door on immigrants illegal and legal, it is a red rag: the inter-racial union a dilution of their effort to “take back the country” and make America white again.
These conflicting themes played out in the Republican echo-sphere after Donald Trump’s vice-presidential nominee JD Vance and his US-born Indian-American wife Usha Chilukuri Vance spoke of their personal story and vision for America at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
“That JD and I could meet at all, let alone fall in love and marry, is a testament to this great country… Neither JD nor I expected to find ourselves in this position… but it’s hard to imagine a more powerful example of the American Dream,” Usha Vance said, while introducing her husband to the party faithful, some of whom held placards reading “Mass Deportations Now!”
She recalled how when they first met, he wanted to know everything about her; where she came from and what her life had been like. “Although he’s a meat and potatoes kind of guy, he adapted to my vegetarian diet and learned to cook food for my mother, Indian food,” she recalled.
JD Vance was as effusive in his speech, calling her “my beautiful wife, Usha, an incredible lawyer and a better mom,” while describing the South Asian immigrant community she hails from as “incredible people…people who genuinely have enriched this country in so many ways.”
But for the racist rat-pack on the extremist fringe of the MAGA movement, the story was the antithesis of their vision of America.
“Who is this guy, really? Do we really expect that the guy who has an Indian wife and named their kid Vivek is going to support white identity?” Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who has met Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, raged in a podcast.
“I’m sure this guy is going to be great on immigration,” Jaden McNeil, another far-right activist and the founder of America First Students, sneered on social media, sharing a picture of the Vances with their newborn baby.
The Vances also copped it from the left/liberal constituency and feminists, with one critic snippily calling her “bright woman marries man who thinks marital violence is no reason for divorce.”
It was a reference to JD Vance strong pro-marriage, pro-motherhood, pro-family stance, echoed in a 2022 tweet telling a critic “If your worldview tells you that it’s bad for women to become mothers but liberating for them to work 90 hours a week in a cubicle at the New York Times or Goldman Sachs, you’ve been had.”
“Your wife…the liberated mother of your three children…is an associate at Munger, Tolles & Olson,” one critic clapped back, while another pointed to her association with the purportedly liberal orientation of the law firm.
Usha Vance said earlier this week she has resigned from the firm to “focus on caring for our family,” a decision that did not go down well with some feminists.
In fact, some of them had issues with JD Vance saying he hoped he and his wife would be laid to rest in his family cemetery in Eastern Kentucky, wondering why he would want to inflict a Christian burial on a self-professed Hindu.
Amid all this there was some levity too.
“I’m surprised her Indian immigrant parents didn’t force her into engineering or medicine and let her study history instead,” joked one troll. Another attributed this made-up quote to Usha’s parents: “If he (Vance) studied more he’d be running for President.”
For the extremist MAGA constituency trying to close the door on immigrants illegal and legal, it is a red rag: the inter-racial union a dilution of their effort to “take back the country” and make America white again.
These conflicting themes played out in the Republican echo-sphere after Donald Trump’s vice-presidential nominee JD Vance and his US-born Indian-American wife Usha Chilukuri Vance spoke of their personal story and vision for America at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
“That JD and I could meet at all, let alone fall in love and marry, is a testament to this great country… Neither JD nor I expected to find ourselves in this position… but it’s hard to imagine a more powerful example of the American Dream,” Usha Vance said, while introducing her husband to the party faithful, some of whom held placards reading “Mass Deportations Now!”
She recalled how when they first met, he wanted to know everything about her; where she came from and what her life had been like. “Although he’s a meat and potatoes kind of guy, he adapted to my vegetarian diet and learned to cook food for my mother, Indian food,” she recalled.
JD Vance was as effusive in his speech, calling her “my beautiful wife, Usha, an incredible lawyer and a better mom,” while describing the South Asian immigrant community she hails from as “incredible people…people who genuinely have enriched this country in so many ways.”
But for the racist rat-pack on the extremist fringe of the MAGA movement, the story was the antithesis of their vision of America.
“Who is this guy, really? Do we really expect that the guy who has an Indian wife and named their kid Vivek is going to support white identity?” Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who has met Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, raged in a podcast.
“I’m sure this guy is going to be great on immigration,” Jaden McNeil, another far-right activist and the founder of America First Students, sneered on social media, sharing a picture of the Vances with their newborn baby.
The Vances also copped it from the left/liberal constituency and feminists, with one critic snippily calling her “bright woman marries man who thinks marital violence is no reason for divorce.”
It was a reference to JD Vance strong pro-marriage, pro-motherhood, pro-family stance, echoed in a 2022 tweet telling a critic “If your worldview tells you that it’s bad for women to become mothers but liberating for them to work 90 hours a week in a cubicle at the New York Times or Goldman Sachs, you’ve been had.”
“Your wife…the liberated mother of your three children…is an associate at Munger, Tolles & Olson,” one critic clapped back, while another pointed to her association with the purportedly liberal orientation of the law firm.
Usha Vance said earlier this week she has resigned from the firm to “focus on caring for our family,” a decision that did not go down well with some feminists.
In fact, some of them had issues with JD Vance saying he hoped he and his wife would be laid to rest in his family cemetery in Eastern Kentucky, wondering why he would want to inflict a Christian burial on a self-professed Hindu.
Amid all this there was some levity too.
“I’m surprised her Indian immigrant parents didn’t force her into engineering or medicine and let her study history instead,” joked one troll. Another attributed this made-up quote to Usha’s parents: “If he (Vance) studied more he’d be running for President.”