Usha Vance has spoken out after being seen without her wedding ring.
The second lady was visiting Camp Lejeune, a military training facility in Jacksonville, North Carolina, with the first lady, Melania Trump, last week, when she was photographed not wearing her wedding ring, leading to speculation that her marriage to Vice President JD Vance was on the rocks.
However, according to a spokesperson for the mother of three, because of her busy life, she sometimes forgets to wear her wedding ring.
Usha is “a mother of three young children, who does a lot of dishes, gives lots of baths, and forgets her ring sometimes,” the spokesperson told People.
The couple first met while they were attending Yale Law School together and got married in 2014. The two share three children: sons Ewan, 8, and Vivek, 5, and daughter Mirabel, 3.
Rumors that the vice president and his wife were struggling in their marriage first began when JD had given Erika Kirk — the widow of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk — a long hug last month.
At the time, Kirk and JD were at a Turning Point USA event where Kirk introduced the vice president at a tour stop at the University of Mississippi, as she spoke about the similarities between JD and her late husband.
“No one will ever replace my husband. But I do see some similarities of my husband in JD — in Vice President JD Vance. I do. And that's why I am so blessed to be able to introduce him tonight,” she said at the event before she hugged him, before moving her hand to the back of his head while he rested his hands on Kirk’s waist.
Many people were quick to analyze the hug on social media, claiming it was too intimate for a recent widow and a married man.
At the same Turning Point USA event, JD had also sparked comments about his marriage when he said he hoped Usha, who was raised and still considers herself Hindu, would convert to Catholicism.
“Most Sundays, Usha will come with me to church. Do I hope, eventually, that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by church? Yeah, honestly, I do wish that, because I believe in the Christian gospel and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way,” he said.
“But if she doesn't, then God says everybody has free will and so that doesn't cause a problem for me.”
