Vice President JD Vance has assured America that he and Usha Vance think the rampant speculation that their marriage is on the rocks is funny.
“I think that we kind of get a kick out of it,” said the 41-year-old vice preside in an interview with NBC News about how he and Usha feel about rumors that the couple is headed for a split. “Our marriage is as strong as it’s ever been,” he added.
Usha Vance, 39, was not present for the interview, nor did she offer a comment for the piece.
The state of JD and Usha’s marriage was called into question after she was twice spotted without her wedding ring in two weeks.
The first incident occurred on Nov. 19 during a visit to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. As the moment sparked headlines, a spokesperson for the second lady told People that Usha Vance is “a mother of three young children, who does a lot of dishes, gives lots of baths, and forgets her ring sometimes.”
Vance said that before the second instance, a Dec. 1 event with first lady Melania Trump, Usha realized in the car she had forgotten her ring after taking a shower.
“She was like, ‘Oh, if I don’t go back and get them, there’s going to be some ridiculous psycho who talks about it on social media,’” Vance told NBC News. “And I was like, ‘Let them. It’s not even worth the trip to run back upstairs.’ So we actually have a little bit of fun with it. And we thought that whole viral social media cycle was kind of funny.”
The couple has three children, Ewan, 8, Vivek, 5, and daughter Mirabel, 3.
While Vance addressed Usha’s neglect of her wedding ring with NBC News, he did not discuss either of the two other incidents that sparked speculation about the health of their marriage.
On Oct. 30, Vance publicly wished at a Turning Point USA event that Usha would ditch her Hindu faith and convert to Catholicism, as he did in 2019, while she stood with her arms crossed in the crowd. The incident drew claims of Hindu-phobia and insinuations that Vance was throwing his wife “under the bus.”
At the same event, he shared a tender on-stage hug with Charlie Kirk’s widow, Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk, which to some onlookers seemed suspiciously intimate.
Usha began neglecting to wear her wedding ring three weeks after the Turning Point USA event. There is no media coverage of her forgetting to wear her wedding ring in a public appearance before the Nov. 19 incident.
