While Donald Trump is accustomed to making the headlines, America’s Vice President JD Vance has had his own fair share of the spotlight this week but what do we know about the president’s wing man?
Both Trump and Vance verbally attacked Ukraine President Zelensky, accusing him of leading “propaganda tours” of the destruction caused by Russia’s invasion. But what do we know about JD Vance and his second lady wife?
The 50th Vice President of the United States is from Ohio and joined the the Marine Corps, where he served as a military journalist from 2003 to 2007 and went to Iraq. After growing up in poverty, he later practised as a corporate lawyer before embarking on a career in the tech industry as a venture capitalist.
After initially opposing Donald Trump’s candidacy in the 2016 election, Vance, 40, became a strong Trump supporter during Trump’s first presidency in 2017 and was chosen as his deputy in 2024. Nine years ago, he publicly called the Republican businessman an “idiot” and said he was “reprehensible” and privately compared him to Adolf Hitler.
Now the two are thick as thieves and stoked controversy last night for rowing with the Ukraine President about the Ukraine war and accusing Zelensky of propaganda against Russia and Putin.
Before he was elected VP in July, many Brits hadn’t heard of Vance, but what do we know about him now? Trump’s right-hand man was born James Donald Bowman in Ohio to a mother who struggled with addiction and a father who left the family when Vance was just a toddler.
He was raised by his grandparents, “Mamaw” and “Papaw”, whom he sympathetically portrayed in Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir about his life which was made into a film in 2020. When he married, both JD and his wife Usha, 39, took the last name of Vance to honour his maternal grandparents’ family name – leading to his current name: James David Vance.
The two met when they were both studying at Yale Law School in 2010 and joined a discussion group on “social decline in white America”. They married in Kentucky in 2014 and have three children – who are seven, four and three. Usha Vance had a posher upbringing than her husband, growing up in San Diego with parents who were Indian immigrant academics.
In his book, Vance recalls how he “violated every rule of modern dating” by telling Usha he was in love with her after the first date. And many people who know Vance credit his remarkable success story to the influence of his wife who shuns the limelight to shield their young children.
When comments by JD Vance in which he called some Democratic politicians “childless cat ladies” resurfaced on social media in July it was Usha who defended him and said they were meant as a reflection on the challenges facing working families in America and taken out of context.
“When he goes out and makes a great speech, she advises him, and gives him her opinion, and it’s taken seriously,” according to Jai Chabria, a family friend and political consultant told USA Today. And it would seem that Vance knows only too well how lucky he is and has a lot of appreciation for his wife, often lovingly referring to her as his ‘spirit guide’ .