Where’s Melania Usha? That’s the question everyone’s been asking.

VP wannabe JD Vance’s wife has been mostly MIA on the campaign trail since he accepted the Republican nomination for Vice President in July.

To be fair, she’s not quite as MIA as Melania Trump, who has made less than a dozen campaign-related appearances since her husband announced his reelection bid in November 2022. But she’s also no Gwen Walz, who’s been traversing the country up, down, left, and right to promote the Harris/Walz ticket.

When The Daily Beast inquired about Mrs. Vance’s extremely light schedule for someone who could potentially be the nation’s next Second Lady, the Vance’s spokesperson, Taylor Van Kirk, said she’s actually made several appearances on the campaign trail, including joining JD on a quick visit to Gordon’s Butcher & Market in Erie, Pennsylvania last week and greeting voters alongside him at a diner in St. Cloud, Minnesota in July.

When it comes to public speeches and interviews, however, Mrs. Vance has done a total of, checks notes, two: introducing her husband at the Republican National Convention in July and a quick sit-down with Fox News a month later, during which she defended his remarks about childless cat ladies and tried to explain how she went from loathing Trump in 2016 to going full MAGA in 2024.

“Well, you know, I’ve had several years since then to kind of understand what it is that he is out to do,” Vance, an attorney, said of Trump, a convicted felon. “If I didn’t feel that the ticket, you know, the Trump-Vance ticket was able to do some real good for the country, then I wouldn’t be here supporting him and JD wouldn’t have done this.”

Of course, there could be any number of reasons why she’s kept a lower profile than most political spouses whose significant others are running for the highest office in the land.

It could be that she really doesn’t want to be Second Lady of the United States and is only going along with this because, as the obedient wife of a conservative Republican lawmaker, it’s what’s expected of her.

She certainly seemed pretty indifferent to the whole thing in that Fox News interview last month, when she said, “I’m not raring to change anything about our lives right now, but I believe in JD, and I really love him, and so we’ll just sort of see what happens with our life.”

Or it could be that, almost immediately after JD was tapped to be Trump’s #2, MAGA started going after her for her Indian heritage. Then, instead of condemning the attacks like a normal person, he went on Megyn Kelly’s podcast to talk about how he loves his wife despite the fact that “she’s not a white person.”

“Look, I love my wife so much,” he said. “I love her because she’s who she is. Obviously, she’s not a white person, and we’ve been accused, attacked by some white supremacists over that, but I just, I love Usha.”

With soft remarks like that, we can understand why she would want nothing to do with her husband’s campaign or the people who support him.

Or it could be that the Trump/Vance ticket is intentionally keeping her off the trail because they see her ethnic background, which hurts the campaign’s all-white optics.

Vance was careful not to mention her Hindu upbringing or her personal faith during her speech at the RNC in July, and she refused to comment about it when asked by the Associated Press afterwards.

Dheepa Sundaram, a Hindu Studies professor at the University of Denver, told the AP: “To me it seems like her Hindu identity is more of a liability than an asset. It also feels like the campaign wants to have it both ways: Usha may be Hindu, which is great, but we don’t want to talk about it.”

This week, Gwen Walz’s schedule includes hosting a presidential debate watch party in Wisconsin tomorrow before zipping down to Georgia for a campaign event, then over New Hampshire, and then onto Maine later in the week. Meanwhile, Usha Vance’s schedule includes a single fundraiser in New Mexico on Friday.

Related*

Help make sure LGBTQ+ stories are being told...

We can't rely on mainstream media to tell our stories. That's why we don't lock Queerty articles behind a paywall. Will you support our mission with a contribution today?

Once Monthly Annually

Cancel anytime · Proudly LGBTQ+ owned and operated