Vice President JD Vance appeared to publicly throw his wife, Usha, under the bus during a recent speaking engagement, but one author thinks the scene was part of a more "cynical gambit" to inherit the MAGA movement from President Donald Trump.
Controversial journalist Michael Wolff, who has written four books about Trump, discussed Vance's recent appearance at a Turning Point USA event with the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk's wife, Erika, on a new episode of "Inside Trump's Head," a podcast he co-hosts with Joana Coles of The Daily Beast.
Vance and Erika Kirk shared an embrace that some commentators have said was a calculated move. During a Q&A session, Vance also said he wished his wife had converted to Catholicism instead of practicing Hinduism.
"There are an uncountable number of people in the United States of America in 2025 who are in marriages that cross religious and ethnic lines," Wolff said. "This is not a complicated thing...I would go so far as to say that if that is an issue in your marriage, then things may not turn out so well...And I suspect it's not an issue in the Vances' marriage."
"Vance is one of the most shapeshifting politicians of our time and probably among the most cynical," he continued. "What is playing out behind the scenes is as we move toward the power vacuum that a lame duck second term president inevitably creates...the MAGA people are going to be trying to triangulate the heir apparent, who is JD Vance."
"As the MAGA people become more racist, more anti-Semitic, and more about closing borders, that puts JD Vance into an increasingly difficult position," he added. "He can't hope to succeed in Republican primaries if he loses the MAGA base. So, he threw the MAGA base a bone; the bone became his brown wife."
"Even the creepiest person would not say, let's say this," Wolff said. "So what does that mean? Either means he is outdoing the creepiest kind of person, or he and his wife have triangulated this themselves. So again, this is a cynical gambit. He told her and I actually suspect they plotted this out."