Vice President JD Vance laughed off the social media speculation about his marriage to Second Lady Usha Vance after she was recently photographed without her wedding ring, and said their relationship was “as strong as it’s ever been.”
“I think that we kind of get a kick out of it,” Vance told NBC News in an interview published Friday.
The pair’s marriage came under scrutiny online when Usha Vance was seen without her wedding ring as she visited Camp Lejeune, a military training facility in Jacksonville, North Carolina, alongside First Lady Melania Trump on November 19.
And President Joe Biden’s former press secretary Jen Psaki stirred controversy in October when she joked about saving Usha Vance from her marriage to the vice president, prompting an angry response from the White House.
“With anything in life, you take the good with the bad,” JD Vance told NBC, referring to the attention that they garner now that they are in the White House.
He added: “You accept that there are some sacrifices and there are some very good things that come along with it, too. But our marriage is as strong as it’s ever been, and I think Usha’s really taken to it, and it’s been kind of cool to see how she’s developed and evolved in this new role.”
Responding when the missing wedding ring photos first went viral, a spokesperson for the Second Lady said in a statement that she was “a mother of three young children, who does a lot of dishes, gives lots of baths and forgets her ring sometimes.”
Vance: Heir to Trump’s MAGA Movement?
The couple has been in the spotlight since President Donald Trump picked Vance to be his running mate in the 2024 presidential election.
They met at Yale Law School, got married in 2014, and have three children. She worked as a trial lawyer for the Munger, Tolles & Olson law firm, but left shortly after her husband was chosen as Trump’s running mate.
Scrutiny of them is set to increase as Trump has suggested Vance is likely the heir apparent to his MAGA movement.
In an interview earlier this year, Usha Vance said she was “not plotting out” the next steps, adding that she would be happy to be “along for the ride” if her husband became president.
“There are a lot of us around here that are focused on JD being the next president,” Senator Jim Banks of Indiana previously told Newsweek.
Republicans in Washington are already buzzing about a likely Vance presidential run in 2028, even though the election is still three years away.
