Usha Responds To Abdul El-Sayed After Her Husband Begins An Identity War

India-West News Desk

WASHINGTON, DC – Second lady Usha Vance said she ‘kind of laughed’ at a remark by Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed that invoked her Indian heritage while responding to Vice President JD Vance’s criticism of his views on Sharia law.

‘Because yes, I never met JD’s Mamaw and Papaw,’ Usha Vance said in an August 26 interview with ‘Fox & Friends.’ ‘But I do know and love the children that they raised, his mom, his aunt and uncle. And they have never been anything but incredibly loving.’

The exchange began when JD Vance took aim at El-Sayed during a rally in Ohio over his past comments on Sharia law.

Vance said El-Sayed had argued that criticism of Sharia law was rooted in ‘White supremacy’ and contrasted that position with the views of his grandfather, James Vance, whom he calls his ‘Papaw.’

‘I’d love to go back in time and tell my Papaw that there is a man who claims to stand for working people who says not only should we have Sharia law, but if you criticize it, you’re a White supremacist,’ Vance said.

El-Sayed then brought Usha Vance into the dispute in a social media post.

‘So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no…’ he wrote.

The remark was criticized as implying that JD Vance’s grandfather, who died decades before Vance married Usha, might not have accepted her because she is Indian.

El-Sayed later defended the comment in an August 22 interview with MS NOW, arguing that Vance’s invocation of his grandfather suggested that having American ancestors who lived in the country earlier made someone more American.

‘The confusing thing about it is that he thinks that there are some people who are more American than others because they can point to their Papaw who was here earlier,’ El-Sayed said.

He then turned the argument directly toward Usha Vance’s family.

‘Why is it then, how do you look your parents-in-law in the eye and say that somehow they’re less American than you are?’ he said. ‘Because that’s what he’s implying there.’

Usha Vance, however, focused on the family relationships she has come to know rather than the implication behind El-Sayed’s remark.

‘His aunt is like a second mother to me,’ she said. ‘And so I have to think that if they raised children like that, they would have been loving as well. And I would have really, really, really loved to have met them.’

JD Vance was raised in large part by his grandparents, James and Bonnie Vance. James died in 1997 and Bonnie died in 2005.