Barack Obama has called out JD Vance for taking a hardline stance on who belongs in America while being married into an immigrant family.
The former president brought up the vice president’s marriage to Usha Vance, who received U.S. citizenship at birth after her parents immigrated from India, while peddling MAGA ideas of who gets to be considered American amid the Trump administration’s push to end birthright citizenship.
“At least one of our major parties has been captured by politics that is not that subtle about suggesting that ‘we the people’ means a certain kind of people,” Obama said on a podcast with author Malcolm Gladwell.
“When you have the vice president—the current vice president—making a speech that is basically a blood-and-soil version of ‘we the people,’ that it matters who your parents were, how long they’ve been here, despite him being married to... a daughter of an immigrant himself, that echoes, then, ideas about who can be a citizen, who belongs, who gets to make decisions.”
Obama, 64, appeared to be referring to a speech Vance, 41, gave at a conservative think tank last year, where the vice president declared, “America is not just an idea. We’re a particular place, with a particular people, and a particular set of beliefs and way of life.”
In his speech, Vance rejected the idea that America is a “purely creedal nation” and railed against people who supposedly argue that only those who believe in “progressive liberalism” are American.
“I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong,” concluded Vance.
Gladwell, 60, argued that Vance’s marriage is actually a “lovely illustration” of how the country has moved “from malice to hypocrisy,” noting that a century ago, a vice president could not have made a “nativist argument” while married to the daughter of Indian immigrants.
“Listen, hypocrisy is progress,” Obama responded. “Because it means that... you feel guilty enough to either lie to yourself or others. And that is better than not even thinking about the idea that maybe you’re doing something wrong.”
Vance’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Vance and Usha share three children, Ewan, Vivek, and Mirabel, and are expecting a fourth later this month.
The vice president pushed hard for President Donald Trump’s executive order excluding children born on U.S. soil to parents in the country illegally or under temporary visas from receiving automatic citizenship.
Some speculated that the order could put Usha’s citizenship at risk, since her parents’ immigration status at the time of her birth is unknown, but the order was not retroactive.
The Supreme Court struck down the executive order in a 6-3 decision last month, saying Trump lacked the authority to override the citizenship protections guaranteed under the 14th Amendment.
Vance called the ruling a “major mistake.”
