The Cut: Usha Vance’s former classmate wonders if Usha is a sociopath

The election is one week away. And we’ve barely seen or heard from Usha Vance at all throughout the whole cycle. She gave one speech at the RNC and a couple of cable news interviews. Other than that, she’s been in the wind. It’s notable because Donald Trump’s wife has also been largely absent from the campaign trail, and it’s notable because Trump is in such poor physical and mental health, it feels almost certain that JD Vance would end up becoming president, if the Trump-Vance ticket actually won. Which would make the Vances two of the most unvetted and unexamined people to ever reside in the White House. I’m glad that The Cut at least attempted to speak to people who have known Usha Vance throughout her life and that at least someone is trying to unpack the enigma of Usha. You can read the Cut piece here. Some highlights:

Usha’s silence: As her husband’s arc in public life has been distinguished by his willingness to say absolutely anything, at great length and often eloquently, to get ahead, Usha has seemed to intentionally say as little as she can get away with. She has largely kept her own beliefs — political and otherwise — inscrutable even to those close to her. She declined to be interviewed for this story, but my conversations with her friends and associates from college, law school, and judicial clerkships were remarkably uniform. I was told that Usha was well liked, academically and professionally impressive, and that her inner life was a black box. “She didn’t seem to have strong emotions,” a law-school classmate and former friend said. “It didn’t seem like things got to her that much, and she was never very vulnerable.” The classmate added, sincerely, “I kind of wonder if she’s a sociopath.”

Appalled by Trump? Many people who knew Usha in the years before J.D. went MAGA wonder how this nonwhite daughter of immigrants, a former registered Democrat and successful beneficiary of some of the most elite institutions in the world, could stomach the realities of the Trump-Vance ticket. There is at least some evidence that Usha is holding her nose as she participates, or at least that she would like people to believe she is: In July, an unnamed friend told the Washington Post that Usha had found the January 6 attack “deeply disturbing” and was “generally appalled by Trump.” J.D. was always a conservative, but his turn to election-denying, immigrant-libeling, childless-woman-hating did not begin until his first declared run for office in 2021. “Initially, I thought, Surely she can’t be okay with this, and she’s going to divorce him in time,” said the ex-friend. “Then I saw her at the Republican National Convention and thought, Could she actually be onboard?”

When Usha met JD: Usha and J.D. met in their very first days at Yale Law. The two were assigned to the same “small group,” a cohort that takes all their classes together in their first semester. In Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. describes quickly falling for Usha because she was “a combination of every positive quality a human being should have: bright, hardworking, tall, and beautiful.” A classmate who was friendly with them both, Christopher Lapinig, now an attorney in Los Angeles, recalled it somewhat differently. “I distinctly remember him saying that one of the biggest things, maybe the biggest thing, that drew him to her was her ambition,” he told me. “It said something that J.D., in this school of generally ambitious, high-achieving people, found Usha to be especially ambitious above and beyond the average YLS student.”

JD Vance once wanted to be a stay-at-home dad: J.D. seemed to take Chua’s advice. Sofia Nelson, who ended a close friendship with J.D. when he publicly declared his support for an Arkansas ban on trans health care for minors, says that near the end of law school, J.D. told her that he was open to being a stay-at-home dad. Usha and J.D. got engaged near the end of their final year at YLS. It was important to J.D. that their family, unlike the one of his childhood, all share the same name, and Hamel, his surname at the time, came from a stepfather who was only in his life briefly. J.D. told at least two friends that he was open to taking Usha’s last name, Chilukuri. In the end, the two chose Vance, the name of the maternal grandparents who largely raised him.

Hillbilly Elegy was published in 2016: According to former friends and acquaintances, the book’s overwhelming success put J.D.’s career in the front seat. The memoir — of a difficult midwestern and Appalachian childhood, sprinkled with punditry about white working-class culture — was fortuitously timed, appearing in late June 2016, roughly four months before the presidential election, and it was received as a skeleton key to understanding Trump voters, even as Vance robustly criticized Trump and broadcast that he’d voted for the independent Evan McMullin. Usha, J.D. told a friend at the time, voted for Hillary Clinton.

JD’s language began to change in 2020: On the campaign trail, J.D. began referring to his children as belonging to Usha. “My wife has three little kids” he told a conservative radio host in Ohio after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, as if they were born through parthenogenesis. “She’s got three kids,” he said this October to the New York Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro. Now, when J.D. is asked to talk about paid family leave or what it is about American culture he believes is hostile to childbearing, as he was at the vice-presidential debate, he often describes Usha as a “working mother” without implying that he himself has anything to juggle. He has come a long way from the would-be stay-at-home dad who put his wife’s career first.

[From The Cut]

Seeing their history laid out like this, I definitely think the hinge on their marriage was the success of Hillbilly Elegy. Before JD’s book was published, the plan absolutely seemed to be that Usha was the go-getter, that she had the more dynamic career, that he would support her wherever she needed to go, even if it meant that he was a stay-at-home dad. Then everything shifted with the book and suddenly JD was the one being groomed for Republican stardom. Suddenly, within the space of two years, JD became a chauvinist pig who resented his wife’s career and every woman’s career. Suddenly, all he cared about was getting women out of the workforce and tied to abusive men who use those women as baby factories and indentured servants. But going back to Usha’s ambition… that’s why she’s staying, right? While she might hate what her husband says, she loves the power and hey, she might get to be First Lady.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, screencaps from Fox News.

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41 Responses to “The Cut: Usha Vance’s former classmate wonders if Usha is a sociopath”

  1. A disfunctional horror story in my humble opinion.

  2. Ciotog says:

    He cared about her height and called it a “positive quality”? So weird.

    • Whatever says:

      Yes, her height. Conspicuously absent from the list of positive qualities a human should have: kindness, consideration, thoughtfulness, empathy, etc…

  3. Lucy says:

    To me the most striking image of her is her speech at the RNC in front of an audience holding up signs that said MASS DEPORTATION. Emotional black box indeed.

  4. yipyip says:

    I have no idea how any female could marry and have children with a man like Vance.
    “Something” is wrong in her thinking for certain.

    • Anna says:

      Long time ago I have learned that if one person in a relationship is a walking red flag, never ask why their partner is still in the relationship. Because usually there is a reason those two got and stayed together and more than often the second person is as bad only better at hiding it.

      • Nina says:

        I would hope that you don’t apply this logic in an instance in which someone is abusing their partner and the one being abused stays because they feel powerless and scared to leave.

      • Anna says:

        Please check the topic we are commenting on. I did not explore every possibility of a relationship dynamic. Abuse is a whole different story but this is not what we see here.

  5. Mab's A'Mabbin says:

    It’s a study in psychology to be sure. This entire “era” will be profusely studied with magnifying glasses, not that they’ll need any.

    • Blithe says:

      Yeah, one of the fascinating—and horrible — things about this political era is that future generations of psychology students and ABDs trying to narrow down dissertation topics will have So Much data. The biggliest and the bestest data.

  6. Jaded says:

    I see her as more manipulative, a sort of cipher of a human being who is just as invested in getting to the Whitehouse as JD, but she’s a puppet master, just quietly pulling the strings behind the back of her public-facing husband. That makes her a lot scarier than her meek, mild-mannered persona belies.

    • Debbie says:

      Seriously. I don’t know why the writer above extrapolates from the article that Usha doesn’t agree with her husband’s point of view. If he can change, why can’t she?

    • Lizzie Bathory says:

      Yeah, she strikes me as a Casey DeSantis type–seeking power at any cost. I hope their kids have some people who care for them. JD seems to loathe his children & Usha cozies up to white nationalists who despise them for existing.

      • Korra says:

        The Casey DeSantis comparison is spot on. Read any profile about her and the same things said about Usha Vance are the same things said about her: polite, hardworking, ambitious, yet completely unknowable and not one to let you get close or get a sense of their inner workings.

    • Nic919 says:

      She clerked for Roberts and beer goggles. She’s never been a liberal or Democrat.

      • Meredith says:

        Yes, this. She wouldn’t have applied to work for conservative judges if she wasn’t deeply conservative herself.

  7. lanne says:

    She’s another Candace Owens as far as Im’ concerned. She thinks that if she yells conservative shit the loudest, she’ll be protected as one of the “good ones.” She’s too selfish, stupid, or sociopathic to realize that many of her party want to see her deported too, or at the very least her parents. I think deep down, women like that think they can return in penance and be accepted again by their own people if things go wrong–all they have to do is cry and claim they “were mislead”. She’s a turkey voting for thankgiving, who will then sob that she had no idea what thanksgiving meant. Fuck her, and fuck all self-hating women who will willingly work to destroy the lives of other women to keep their own places in society. She’s choosing to ally herself with racist haters and thinks her marriage will protect her. I’m sure there are people whispering in Vance’s ear that another wife would be “more appropriate–ahem, white”. It’s no surprise he talks about his own children as his wife’s. He wouldn’t be the first white man to fuck over his biracial children.

    • Debbie says:

      Don’t you mean, his wife’s children? /s. (I couldn’t believe he referred to them that way, more than once. I can’t even begin to understand what the calculus of that meant.) That boy is one. odd. duck.

  8. MinnieMouse says:

    That last part, about the switch to their children becoming “her children”, is so deeply unsettling

  9. Nic919 says:

    She clerked for judge beer goggles. So she was never anti GOP.

    It is not uncommon for many first year law students to claim they are huge environmentalists and are lefty progressives, but once they get that corporate law job offer they change course for the money. What makes Usha even worse is that she’s aligning herself with people who hate her for not being white. They will also hate her kids.

    She is no better than Melania. Anyone with morals divorces a man who supports a fascist monster. She did not. She believes she will be shielded from the racism. She will not.

  10. Lucía says:

    Um, she’s married to that guy. Am I the only one who doesn’t think her inner thoughts and opinions are not much of a mistery?

    • Anna says:

      I totally agree – sometimes we like to think that the quiet person has many inner thoughts and become curious about it, while this person is as emptiness the inside as they are on the outside. It don’t think Usha thinks too much about what her husband stands for and what it means for her or her kids. She stupidly believes she is the exception and might one day realize she is not.

      • Chrissy says:

        Anyone else thinking that their kids will be the ones paying the price, more than their mother? I feel so sorry for them that their father won’t even claim them as his own!

      • Lucía says:

        Sounds about right. I actually meant I think she agrees with her husband on everything, but what you say is pretty spot-on too.

    • Lucía says:

      *****ARE much of a mistery. Ugh, sorry.

  11. Amy Bee says:

    I think she agrees with her husband’s beliefs and has no problem with campaign.

  12. Kitten says:

    In Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. describes quickly falling for Usha because she was “a combination of every positive quality a human being should have: bright, hardworking, tall, and beautiful.”

    Wow what prose lol. I love that he lists “tall” and “beautiful” as two out of his four most positive qualities for a human being.

  13. Dragon1994 says:

    unlike many, she has the money and means to dump him. That she stays speaks volumes about who she is

  14. yipyip says:

    OMG. Vance said she was “Tall and Beautiful”, good reasons for marrying her?
    Flaming insane.
    I have never heard of Vance until Trump dragged him into public view.

    People like this make me want to take my dog and move to the farthest end of the world.

  15. Nina says:

    Imagine being raised within this kind of dynamic. I really hope that the kids have well-adjusted, grounding adult figures in their lives.

    • lanne says:

      Yes, because their parents suck. Those kids are already likely subject to all kinds of racist hate from the republican camp. They shouldn’t even exist, according to most of them (they want to overturn Loving and ban interracial marriage). For their sake, their father must lose. He might have a chance of regaining a soul.

  16. MsIam says:

    Ugh, these two. Peas in a pod as far as I’m concerned. On another note, Shady Vance reminds me, both physically and personality wise of my first boss out of college. Same belittling, bullying, know-it-all type. We clashed and he fired me. I found out later he was fired from the company for embezzlement.

  17. JoanCallamezzo says:

    Maybe she is going along with this to get on the Supreme Court.

  18. Get Real says:

    I mean she’d have to be, right?

  19. Shoegirl77 says:

    I was unaware that my being 5’1″ was a negative quality. What a weird little man.

  20. FYI says:

    “My wife has three little kids” he told a conservative radio host …

    Holy cow!!! WHAT?!? Who SAYS that? What a frickin’ weirdo.

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