JD Vance’s wife Usha follows Melania Trump’s lead as she remains missing on campaign trail

WASHINGTON, DC: Usha Vance, the wife of Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, is rarely spotted on the campaign trail, leaving one to wonder whether she is following the path of Melania Trump.

A lawyer by profession, Usha made an entry into national politics when former president Donald Trump declared her husband, the incumbent senator from Ohio, as his running mate at July's Republican National Convention.

Nevertheless, nearly two months into Vance's rise to the 2024 race, Usha mostly remains silent and rarely appears alongside her husband campaigning for the Republican ticket.

Notably, this starkly contrasts her Democratic counterpart, Gwen Walz, who has turned out to be a constant presence by her husband Minnesota Gov Tim Walz's side, boosting his campaign.

Are Usha Vance and Melania Trump two sides of the same coin?

Usha Vance and Melania Trump, two ladies who became part of the Republican Party through their husbands, could be considered similar yet different.

Both grew up in different cultures and followed entirely opposite careers.

The 54-year-old former first lady excelled as a model before marrying the real estate mogul, while Usha topped in academics, being an alumna of Yale University and Cambridge University.

Nevertheless, what binds both women together would not go unnoticed: their heritage.

Melania was born in the former Yugoslavia, now part of Slovenia, and immigrated to the US in the late 1990s, where she met her future husband. Similarly, though Usha was raised in the suburbs of San Diego, California, and her parents immigrated from India.

Usha Vance's public appearances after RNC debut

The only stage Usha Vance and Melania Trump shared was the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Besides being her debut into national politics, it was Melania's appearance alongside her husband after a long absence. Since then, both women have had no opportunities to campaign for their husbands together.

After introducing Vance at the RNC, Usha was seen with him around seven times, according to The Daily Beast. It included a campaign event at the Milwaukee Police Association, greeting voters at a restaurant in St Cloud, Minnesota and joining her husband at Gordon’s Butcher & Market in Erie, Pennsylvania, last week.

Her distance from the campaign trail signals she has taken a page out of Melania's playbook because the ex-first lady has not been spotted much supporting her husband's third presidential bid, unlike in 2016 and 2020.

In addition, the Ohio senator's wife did not always agree with former president Trump's politics.

In the aftermath of the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, she disapproved of the MAGA spearhead.

A friend of Usha told the Washington Post, "Usha found the incursion on the Capitol and Trump’s role in it to be deeply disturbing. She was generally appalled by Trump from the moment of his first election."

Usha Vance goes MIA as JD Vance draws ire for controversial remarks against woman

JD Vance managed to find himself in hot water after embarking on his journey to be the vice president when his old interviews containing remarks against women traced their way back to social media.

In one of the clips from 2021, Vance criticised women without children, calling them "childless cat ladies". However, this was a direct jab targetting prominent Democratic women, including Vice President Kamala Harris.

In a Fox News interview, Usha came out in support of her husband, saying, "The reality is, he made a quip in service of making a point that he wanted to make that was substantive."

"And it had actual meaning. And I just wish sometimes that people would talk about those things and that we would spend a lot less time just sort of going through this three-word phrase or that three-word phrase."

Recently, Vance came under fire for another resurfaced video in which he attacked career-driven women, claiming they were picking "a path to misery" instead of starting families.

The controversy did not let Usha break her silence, just like Melania, who never made a public statement to defend her husband's numerous contentious statements.

Irrespective of all, it was only in July that Usha resigned as an attorney for her firm to care for her family, Vance and their three children.