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Rumors about her marriage to Vice President J.D. Vance started flying after Usha Vance was spotted without her wedding ring. A spokesperson for the second woman has now issued a statement addressing them.
Usha, 39, visited Camp Lejeune, a military training facility in Jacksonville, North Carolina, with First Lady Melania Trump on Wednesday, November 19th. Usha was not wearing her wedding ring during the performance and rumors of her marriage to the Vice President (41) aroused on social media after pictures of her outing were published.
Amid the speculation, the Second Lady’s publicist, who is very private and rarely speaks to the press, addressed the ringless appearance in a statement to the public.
A spokesperson said that Usha is “a mother of three young children who cooks a lot, bathes a lot and sometimes forgets her ring.”
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Usha and JD got married in 2014 and have three children, sons Ewan, 8, and Vivek, 5, and daughter Mirabel, 3.
Rumors that the two had broken up spread in late October after the vice president shared a hug with Erica Kirk, the widow of right-wing political organizer Charlie Kirk.
Weeks after Charlie was assassinated during a Turning Point USA event, Erica, who replaced Charlie as Turning Point’s CEO, gave a tearful speech at the beginning of a tour stop at the University of Mississippi in which she said she saw “similarities” between her late husband and J.D. while introducing the vice president.
Shortly after, Erica and JD hugged on stage, and the moment went viral.
“No one can ever replace my husband. But I see some similarities in J.D., Vice President J.D. Vance, with my husband. I do, and that’s why I’m so honored to introduce him tonight,” she said before hugging J.D. closely at an Oct. 29 event.
Erika squeezed the vice president tightly, then moved her hands behind her head and placed them lightly on her hips. The greeting surprised many internet users and spawned a series of viral posts analyzing the hand position and debating whether a hug was appropriate for the situation, given Erica’s recent passing.
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The Turning Point CEO previously said JD was “blessed” following her husband’s death and praised him and Usha for their support.
“He’s been a blessing. Him and Usha, they’re the most amazing people. It’s unbelievable. They’re truly in love,” Erica said in an interview clip recorded ahead of the viral event. “I mean, everything they did for us was so human. They were there for us. They were there for us,” she told Fox News host Jesse Watters.
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JD also became a hot topic when he spoke about his wife’s religion at the Turning Point event on October 29th.
After a student asked the vice president about his multifaith family, the vice president admitted that he hopes his wife, who was raised and still considers herself Hindu, will one day convert to Catholicism, as she did in her 30s. (Before his conversion, JD was a self-proclaimed atheist.)
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“How do you teach your children that their religion should not come before their mother’s? … Why are we making Christianity one of the common denominators for you to join us and to show that we love America as much as you do?” the student asked.
“Everyone needs to come to their own arrangement here,” JD answered in part. “The way we came to this arrangement is that she is my best friend. We have talked about this with each other. So we decided to raise our children as Christians.”
“Most Sundays, Usha comes to church with me. Ultimately, I hope she’s moved in some way the same way I was moved by church. Yeah, honestly, I believe in the Christian gospel, so I hope that eventually my wife will think the same way. But even if she doesn’t, that doesn’t matter to me because God says everyone has free will.”
The vice president concluded his response by saying, “One of the most important principles of Christianity is respect for free will.”
