JD Vance & Wife Usha's Sly Trick To Salvage Divorce Gossip Isn't Working

While Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance appear to be happily married, that hasn't stopped the rampant rumors of an impending divorce between the two from spreading online. Those rumors only continued to blow up in May 2025, when JD snubbed Usha, the mother of his children, in the VP's official Mother's Day post. However, the Vances seemed to put any speculation of marital tension to bed when they arrived in Rome to attend Pope Leo XIV's first mass as the head of the Catholic Church. After the couple's plane touched down, JD allowed Usha to exit the aircraft first, with many on social media praising his act of chivalry ... but we're not sure we buy it.

While we're not saying that JD and Usha are on the rocks necessarily, it's hard to see this moment as being entirely genuine. The VP and Second Lady may simply be trying to push back on all the divorce gossip more than anything else. After all, this sort of posturing for the cameras is fairly common among U.S. politicians and is right out of the royal family's playbook as well. To that end, JD making a show of letting Usha walk out first could be an indicator that all the online chatter bothers him more than he lets on.

Frankly, if JD and Usha Vance really are trying to push back on online rumors, it could speak to some larger insecurities on their end. After all, many of the scandalous rumors pertaining to their alleged marital problems have been contested, if not outright debunked. One of them was actually self-debunking. In September 2024, shortly before the election, a TikTok user made a post claiming that JD and Usha were about to get divorced, before abruptly cutting themselves off and explaining the whole thing was made up. The video was meant to make a point about how misinformation spreads online, though how many people scrolled on before reaching the end of the clip is anyone's guess.

Furthermore, while Usha is a former Hillary Clinton supporter who was allegedly critical of President Donald Trump during his first term, friends of the Vances have pushed back on the idea that J.D.'s decision to run alongside Trump harmed their marriage, or that Usha was stuck in the relationship. "She is close with her family. If she didn't want to be doing this, her out is very easy," one source told The Daily Beast in 2024, adding, "It's hard for me to imagine her being trapped." That in mind, JD may be trying a bit too hard to drive home the same point. The VP doth protest too much, we think.