Extremist supporters of former president Donald Trump are lashing out online against Usha Vance, the wife of Trump\u2019s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), launching anti-immigrant attacks because of her Indian heritage.<\/p>\n
Usha Vance, an attorney, is the daughter of Indian immigrants and a San Diego native. She met her husband, who is currently serving as the junior senator from Ohio, at Yale Law School. The two married in 2014 and have three children. On Wednesday, she introduced him to the world as the Republican nominee for vice president onstage at the Republican National Convention.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen J.D. met me, he approached our differences with curiosity and enthusiasm,\u201d Usha Vance said about her relationship with the Ohio senator. \u201cHe wanted to know everything about me, where I came from, what my life had been like.\u201d<\/p>\n
Usha Vance said that even though her husband is a \u201cmeat-and-potatoes kind of guy,\u201d he \u201cadapted to my vegetarian diet\u201d \u2014 a line that appeared to draw some gasps from the convention floor. Her husband, she added, had even learned to cook Indian food from her mother. In his own remarks, J.D. Vance nodded to his wife\u2019s heritage as he spoke about the United States\u2019 tradition of allowing \u201cnewcomers into our American family.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe allow them on our terms. That\u2019s the way we preserve the continuity of this project from 250 years past to hopefully 250 years in the future. And let me illustrate this with a story, if I may,\u201d he said. \u201cI am, of course, married to the daughter of South Asian immigrants to this country. Incredible people. People who genuinely have enriched this country in so many ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
But while J.D. Vance made clear that he is proud of his wife and her heritage, online, some far-right agitators and rushed to denigrate the couple, their mixed-race family and Usha Vance\u2019s immigrant background.<\/p>\n
The attacks highlight the tensions the vice-presidential nominee will have to navigate in a campaign where Trump has called for harsh anti-immigration measures and used violent rhetoric to describe migrants, including suggesting they be pitted in fights for entertainment.<\/p>\n
After Vance was named Trump\u2019s running mate, far-right activist Jaden McNeil on X shared an undated picture of the Vances and their newborn child on a post captioned: \u201cI\u2019m sure this guy is going to be great on immigration.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a podcast in which he attacked the Vances, Nick Fuentes, an avowed white supremacist, repeated rhetoric often associated with the racist \u201cgreat replacement theory\u201d \u2014 a line of argument popular among the right-wing, white nationalist fringe that falsely claims that there is a plan to \u201creplace\u201d native-born White Americans with immigrants. Fuentes \u2014 who is also known for making antisemitic remarks and who attended the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017 \u2014 said he doesn\u2019t expect \u201cthe guy who has an Indian wife\u201d to \u201csupport White identity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat exactly are we getting here? And that\u2019s not a dig at him just because I\u2019m a racist or something,\u201d Fuentes said. \u201cWhite people are being systematically replaced in America and in Europe through immigration and \u2014 to a much-lesser extent \u2014 due to intermarrying. This guy has a non-White wife.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fuentes \u2014 who visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022 alongside rapper Ye \u2014 also made similarly inflammatory comments about the Vances on X.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for J.D. Vance did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
In his best-selling memoir, \u201cHillbilly Elegy,\u201d J.D. Vance wrote that he fell for his wife in their first year of law school and that she \u201cseemed some sort of genetic anomaly, a combination of every positive quality a human should have: bright, hard-working, tall, and beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Usha Vance, he said, was his \u201cYale spirit guide\u201d who \u201cinstinctively understood the questions I didn\u2019t even know to ask and she always encouraged me to seek opportunities that I didn\u2019t know existed.\u201d Usha Vance was on his side as he ran for Senate in 2022 \u2014 and as he espoused more right-wing, inflammatory rhetoric on the campaign trail, like Trump.<\/p>\n
As a Senate nominee, Vance appeared to echo some of the rhetoric behind the \u201cgreat replacement theory\u201d when he claimed in an interview with Tucker Carlson that Democrats were hoping to win the 2022 election by replacing American voters and bringing in \u201ca large number of new voters to replace the voters that are already here.\u201d<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t acknowledge that becoming a citizen \u2014 which is necessary to vote \u2014 is a lengthy process and that any new immigrant who was allowed to vote in the 2022 election had likely spent years working on their citizenship process.<\/p>\n
American University professor Brian Hughes, who studies extremism and radicalization, said these extremists\u2019 attacks on the Vances show that \u201canti-immigrant rhetoric and very standard White supremacist ideology frequently overlap.\u201d Hughes said McNeil\u2019s post questioning J.D. Vance\u2019s views on immigration because of the makeup of his family is \u201ca dog whistle towards White nationalism\u201d and the \u201cidea that the United States is and should be an exclusively White country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, he noted that views like those espoused by these extremists \u201care marginal voices within the broader far right.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s where these attacks will continue to come from,\u201d he said. \u201cI think that the vast majority of people in the American conservative movement don\u2019t feel this way. And I think that\u2019s to their credit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ohio state Sen. Niraj Antani (R), the first Indian American state senator in Ohio history, pushed back on the notion that Fuentes, McNeil and other far-right agitators who have attacked the Vances represent any faction of the GOP. The two, he said, are \u201cattention-seeking hate mongers,\u201d and Fuentes, Antani noted, is a known antisemite who is \u201cextremely racist and bigoted.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing racist is not partisan, it\u2019s not on the partisan spectrum,\u201d Antani said. \u201cI don\u2019t think, you know, [Fuentes\u2019s] comments are a reflection of any mainstream position. I think this is an extremely small, loudmouth racist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Antani, who is serving as a delegate at the Republican National Convention and who has been supportive of Vance\u2019s vice-presidential nomination, also noted that Trump\u2019s wife, Melania, is an immigrant. He added that the fact that the country could have an immigrant as first lady and the daughter of immigrants as a second lady is a \u201ctestament to the greatness of America.\u201d If Republicans win in November, Usha Vance would be the first non-White second lady.<\/p>\n
But some Republicans celebrated Usha Vance after her husband was named Trump\u2019s running mate. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), a hard-line conservative, praised her in a post on X as \u201cextremely impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMom of 3, met JD at Yale Law School, degrees from Yale and Cambridge, corporate litigator, clerked for Supreme Court justices,\u201d Luna wrote.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Extremist supporters of former president Donald Trump are lashing out online against Usha Vance, the wife of Trump\u2019s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), launching anti-immigrant attacks because of her Indian heritage. Usha Vance, an attorney, is the daughter of Indian immigrants and a San Diego native. She met her husband, who is currently serving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6342,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}