Second Lady Usha Vance says everything changed the moment her husband, J.D. Vance, became Donald Trump’s running mate. In a rare interview, she described how “a switch flipped” in their lives. She went from being “the mostly unknown wife of a United States senator from a flyover state” to the nation’s second lady, embraced fully by the MAGA world.
“The day before J.D. was selected—I did not know he was going to be selected—I was working as a lawyer,” she told The Free Press. “And I had the wardrobe of a person with three children who likes to do things outdoors, who has a dog, who doesn’t like things to be too precious. And then, a switch flipped, and it’s not like it came with a whole new wardrobe and stylist and everything.”
Usha first turned heads at the Republican National Convention in July, wearing a cobalt-blue Badgley Mischka dress with almost no makeup or jewelry. According to WWD, she didn’t consult the designers and “must have purchased the frock on her own at retail,” a spokesperson said. It was a quiet entrance, but one that sparked a lot of attention.
Asked what it was like being an Indian-American woman in MAGA circles, surrounded by “blondes and Botox and facelifts, the low-cut blouses and nine-inch heels,” Usha laughed. “I’m laughing because it would be really hard for me to be blonde,” she joked. “That color would look totally absurd.”
Despite the contrast in style and background, she says the MAGA movement welcomed her warmly. “For what it’s worth, my reception into this world—and I’m not from a particularly wealthy background, not from a very fashion-oriented background personally or professionally—has been really positive,” she said. “People don’t seem to care all that much what I look like.”
Usha is a seasoned professional, having clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh before his Supreme Court appointment. But the shift to public life hasn’t always been smooth. She described how the negativity aimed at her husband sometimes spills into their personal life.
During a March 13 visit to The Kennedy Center in D.C., the couple was heckled at a concert. “I don’t think we anticipated that anyone would really notice,” she said. The moment was caught on video, shared online, and quickly picked up by national media. Usha called it “a really good example of reporting in search of a narrative that tends to occur.”