Usha Vance was caught in an embarrassing lie after being cornered on whether she owned a MAGA hat.
The second lady, 40, who was a registered Democrat until 2014, insisted that she is “not a hat lady” when she was asked in an interview published Monday with NBC News’ Kate Snow about whether she owned the infamous Trump merchandise.
“I don’t really own any hats. I think I have a, uh, a Disneyland hat, I wanna say,” said the Yale Law School graduate, who has been married to Vice President J.D. Vance since 2014.
However, several photos of the second lady wearing hats prove otherwise.
Critics, however, pushed back against the mom of three’s claim, posting multiple images of Usha wearing hats in different public appearances.
An Instagram photo posted in September 2025 on the second lady’s accounts shows Usha wearing a blue baseball hat during a volunteer outing with her husband and their children.
A separate image from April 2025, also on her Instagram, shows Usha in a wide-brim sun hat during an official trip to India.
The pointed hat question followed an awkward exchange in which Usha was asked whether she feels comfortable in the MAGA universe, to which she responded, “No one has ever asked me to engage in any kind of litmus test on anything.”
While her husband has been a vigorous defender of President Trump’s policies, Usha has always been somewhat restrained in her public support of the commander-in-chief.
“If I didn’t feel that the ticket, the Trump-Vance ticket, was able to do some real good for the country, then I wouldn’t be here,” she told Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt.
The second lady did not offer clear accounting of her political views in the interview Monday.
“Sometimes I have thoughts that fit very comfortably to one side or another. Sometimes I have views that are way more idiosyncratic,” she told Snow without elaborating further.
Usha was raised by a pair of liberal academics in California. She later voted Republican when her husband ran for Senate in 2022.
She said she and her husband occasionally disagree, but she doesn’t feel she has to “walk around pretending anything of any sort,” adding that “there’s no expectation that we are going to see eye to eye on everything.”
J.D. Vance came under fire last year after publicly stating in October that he wished his wife, a practicing Hindu, would convert to Catholicism.
“The expectation is that we are going to be open-minded and have a conversation, and that I’ll provide meaningful input from, you know, the perspective of someone who loves him and wants him to succeed,” she added.
The couple is set to have their fourth child together.
