Truth About JD and Usha Vance's Marriage: Michael Wolff | Inside Trump's Head

J.D. Vance spoke at a Turning Point USA convention. In the course of his presentation, he said that he wished his wife, Usha, whose parents are Indian and she was raised as a Hindu, he wished that she would convert to Catholicism as he had done. I think that they're in it together and plotting to achieve the presidency. I am saying that their pillow talk is about power.

We can taste it. All we have to do is bend this way and bend that way and do what, endure what we have to endure.

Michael. Joanna.

OK, first we have to begin with an apology which filled our comments. And I got lots and lots of emails from people quite rightly pointing out that, of course, and I started this, we got the name of the residents of Andrew, formerly known as Prince Andrew, wrong. He wasn't of course a Frogmore. He was at Royal Lodge, a 30 roomed

fabulosity which he's being turfed out of. So that means my joke is ruined about being marched, frog marched out of Frogmore. I know, I loved your being

a frog marched out of Frogmore but al know I loved your being a frog marched out of Frogmore but alas we will have to save it for somebody else. Who does live in Frogmore? Yeah well I think Megan and Harry lived in Frogmore. I'm probably gonna be immediately swamped with more comments and emails but thank you for pointing it out it's very very helpful I never want to get things wrong.

Well, I don't think you deliberately got that wrong. I would say inadvertently.

No, no. Inadvertently, of course. Michael, did you watch the CBS or Fox Light, as it's now being referred to, interview with Donald Trump?

Well, did anyone watch it? Does anyone watch 60 Minutes? But I did see some, a variety of social media clips of the interview, completely appalling in every way. Not just that Donald Trump is, of course, appalling and seems not to remember the person who he clearly remembers, who he pardoned. But even put that aside, the idea that 60 Minutes would do this interview would feel that it could do this interview with any kind of

credibility. And let's remember that 60 Minutes had run an interview with Kamala Harris. They had edited it, as they do most interviews, as they have for 30 years. And then Donald Trump had sued CBS, the network that 60 Minutes is on, and CBS and its parent, Paramount, then settled for $15 million, a totally ridiculous lawsuit, a lawsuit that they certainly would have won if they had gone to court. But in order to facilitate the merger that they were with to merge with Skydance, the studio owned by the Ellison family. They slipped Trump $15 million. And I suspect, although we don't know this, that part of the settlement was that

they would do an interview, a segment-long interview with Donald Trump in very favorable, as you say, Fox-like terms. So this is appalling and no one should watch this interview and no one should watch 60

Minutes. I think it was the same number that on average watched 60 minutes last season. And of course people watch the clips on YouTube now.

But again, it goes to, and I want to make this point because I think it becomes more and more glaring, not only the timidity of the media, but the out of it-ness of network television, cable and network television. I mean they just feel like they're from some other age.

It was also interesting that he knew that the founder of Binance, Sisi, who had been pardoned had only been jailed for four months.

After saying that he had never heard of the man.

Angela Brown Exactly. And then forgetting to say, oh yes, he was actually fined $4 billion for allowing money laundering on the platform by Iran, by Hamas, and by Al-Qaeda.

Matthew 14 Right. and by Al-Qaeda. Right, so the right response from the interviewer would, should have been, what the hell are you talking about, man? But of course, that was not the response.

Well, we want you to interview Donald Trump because that is an interview I would watch with great interest because you do know all the right questions. And of course, we have more questions for you to ask Melania which we'll be getting to later in the show and I guess there's much more to pick apart from the

Trump interview but we're not going to do it here. Instead we're going to talk about something which preoccupied people certainly since last Wednesday which is the JD vance of it all. I know we promised we were going to talk about Russell Vogt today, but actually we're going to push that off to later in the week, because the JD Vance, Erica Kirk Usher Vance story seems more of the moment.

No, I did a brief little Instagram post about this and it got a million and a half views. And I think it's one of those stories in which people can see, I think it's remarkably transparent what's going on here. J.D. Vance spoke at a Turning Point USA, I was going to say concert, I don't think we call them concerts, although they are, they appear to be as though a concert. So he spoke there and in the course of his presentation, he said that he wished his wife, Usha, whose parents are Indian and she was raised as a Hindu, he wished that she would convert to Catholicism as he had done. I think that this is kind of rude to say the very least, also unnecessary on so many levels.

Why would you do that? Why would you say this publicly about your wife?

He said it in answer to a question, right, which someone said you have an interfaith interracial marriage. Is your religion ahead of your wife's religion as you raise your

children? So he threw her under the bus in common parlance or sent her to the back of the bus as it were, the brown person. I mean, astounding. There are an uncountable number of people in the United States of America in 2025 who are in marriages that cross religious and ethnic lines. This is not a complicated thing.

This is one of those things that we understand as part of human interaction and human understanding. And I would go so far as to say that if that is an issue in your marriage, things may not turn out so well. And in most marriages, it is not an issue. And I suspect, here's the other thing here, I suspect it's not an issue in the Vance's marriage. I suspect that this was a, that J.D. Vance is one of the most shape-shifting politicians of our time and probably among the most cynical. This was a give, a give to the MAGA people.

So he's doing this to rally support from the MAGA base? Yeah, I think

what is going on now and what is playing out behind the scenes is as we move toward Trump's, to understand, to the power vacuum that a lame duck second term president inevitably inevitably creates within people trying to fill this. The MAGA people are going to be more and more trying to triangulate the heir apparent, who is J.D. Vance. And as the MAGA people become more extreme, more focused on white preference, I mean, effectively as they become more racist,

more anti-Semitic, and more about closing borders. That puts J.D. Vance into an increasingly difficult position. He can't, he probably can't, he can't hope to succeed in Republican primaries if he loses the MAGA base. And that's, that could very well happen. Therefore, to speak to the MAGA base, to throw them a bone. The bone became his brown wife. But, and what I'm saying, what I was saying is that, is that I suspect, number one, you would never

ever say this in public about your wife. Even the creepiest person would not say this. So, what does that mean? Either it means he is outdoing the creepiest kind of person, or he and his wife have triangulated this themselves. So, again, that this is a cynical gambit. He told her, and I actually suspect this is it, they plotted this out. He has, the presidency they see in possible reach, but in order to get there, they have to do this.

So they sat at the kitchen table and he said, or she said, you gotta throw me under the bus.

It's absolutely fascinating. And their marriage itself is particularly interesting because we know that her parents were Democrats. She is incredibly highly educated, Yale undergrad, Yale Law School. She was a Gates Fellow at Clare College, Cambridge. She's not someone you would think of as being in any way leaning towards MAGA, though she did clerk for Justice

Kavanaugh and Justice John Roberts.

Well, let's make the distinction between leaning toward power or leaning toward MAGA. So they're leaning toward power, but in order to get to that power, you have to go toward MAGA. So you're leaning, they're leaning toward power but in order to get to that power you have to go through MAGA.

It's obviously she's given up her job to travel with him and to look after the kids which I totally get and yet in terms of the photographs that you see she looks more and more miserable. And you can't always tell, of course, but I'm always mindful of how Princess Diana was using photographs to tell the story of what was happening with her

and then Prince Charles, like the picture of her sitting in front of the Taj Mahal on an India trip, very much alone. And her signaling was, Charles is having an affair with Camilla. I'm here on my own and I'm lonely. And Ushavans, having started out looking sort of cheerful, looks thinner and smaller and more haggard.

She hasn't had, as some of us predicted, a sort of transfer to the MAGA coding for how women turn up like Kimberly Guilfoyle, who started natural and became drag queen.

We have two views. You think that the marriage is heading together and plotting to achieve the presidency.

I have no idea if the marriage is in the crap up.

But you just described – I mean, you described, I mean, Diana, you know, that's the portrait that you've painted that it could – that it is more likely leaning in that direction or the possibility is that it's leaning in that direction. And I'm saying the exact opposite.

At the end of the day, what is their pillow talk?

I am saying that their pillow talk is about power. We can taste it. All we have to do is bend this way and bend that way, and, you know, do what, endure what we have to endure. I mean, I don't think, I think, I mean, let's look at J.D. Vance and remember, changed his name, changed his religion, changed his entire political bearing. Remember when Trump was Hitler? Now Trump is the savior. I literally do not think he cares. I mean, I think that this is all

about getting from point A to point B with him. I do not believe he believes any of this. I believe that he thinks Donald Trump is, if not Hitler, certainly a cretin. You know, the truth is that J.D. Vance wrote a very, very intelligent book. He wrote it himself. He is demonstrably a nuanced thinker. So the fact that he's in this position, that he is now as the, you know, the butt boy to Donald Trump is not what a nuanced, is not the position a nuanced writer would end up in except if he has a grander plan.

So do you think when they're shutting down at night in their bedroom in the observatory, he's saying, oh my God, I was so right right, of course he's the new Hitler, what a nightmare, how much longer are we going to have to put up with this? No, I think

it's much more nuanced than that, I think they're plotting every single day what this person said to that person, what that person said to that person, and what we have to do on an incremental basis to to parry, to neutralize, to advance.

And the Hindu faith, I was talking to Indian friends about this over the weekend, is a very pragmatic religion. It's not proselytizing in the way that JD claims that Catholicism is, although I don't actually think Catholicism is proselytizing like that. He was sort of claiming that it was duty as a Christian to tell others and convert them, which I grew up in the Church of England, it was never part of our message, though I

get the remission trips if you're a Mormon, and it's more of an evangelical trait which he grew up in.

Peter Van Doren Yeah, no, no, it's completely more of a, yeah. Yeah, no, no, it's completely more of a, yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, the whole thing is peculiar in trying to play any advantage.

Do you think they are the most power hungry couple in DC?

No, I think that DC is full of power hungry people. And I think that's what's going on right now. As soon as you know, Donald Trump, we the the the inside circle of Republican ambition begins to see the the the vacuum created by Donald Trump, that he won't run again, even if he is trying to obscure that fact by by announcing here and there that a third term, that there is a world of a third term. You know, I mean, he's, it becomes important for you to try to distract from the fact that you are a lame duck. So I think that's partly what's going on there, although at the same time, recognizing that this is Donald Trump.

So we don't know what will happen. But assuming we're on a historical timeline here, the midterms will happen. And then we will begin to begin to prepare for for who will be the nominee on both the Democratic side and the Republican side. And so power, there are going to be a lot of power hungry people on both

sides, Democrat and Republican, who will begin to make their moves. So let me ask you something,

because the one thing that we haven't picked up on around their marriage, which the internet was absolutely full of over the weekend, was his hug with Erica Kirk.

Yeah, no, I mean, I don't think, if we follow your path for their marriage, then yes, the storybook, so to speak, ending would be for JD Vance to marry Erica Kirk. That would be the ultimate shape-shifting power move.

There were a lot of behavioral experts online over the weekend analyzing and breaking down the hug. Her long fingernailed fingers in his hair, his sort of patting her back. I mean, it's very, well it's very hard to have any idea what's going on inside someone else's marriage, right?

No one knows.

Peter Robinson Well, we've just presented two options of what might be going on inside this marriage.

Helen Miller Well, and there may well be a third option that we have no idea about. Perhaps Usha's having a wildlife on the side. She's certainly not giving up that vibe. She's giving off a very obedient wife vibe.

Well, I think that's part of the plot from my point of view. From your point of view, it's part of the Stockholm Syndrome.

Well, just another room one longs to be a fly on the wall on.

But, you know, I mean, recognize what's at issue here. I mean, this person has come in a very this is J.D. Vance has come in a very, very short period of time to to within the grasp of the ultimate.

No, that's the brass ring. The brass ring is right there for him and he's reaching for it.

What has he done to get there so far? And what would he do to get the rest of the way?

And who else is he up against?

Yeah, and I think one of the things, I mean, he is clearly up against and clearly has to deal with a fast morphing transmogrifying MAGA movement. So MAGA, which used to be, exists just to be the, just to express its loyalty to Donald Trump, and to be a very efficient list for Trump merchandise, is now becoming something else.

And you can see breaks all over the place with Donald Trump. Breaks on Epstein, breaks on Israel, Marjorie Taylor Greene is bolting from the barn door. Tucker has become some extreme version of extreme even for MAGA. And the Nick Fuentes thing the other day, I mean, actually introduced Nick Fuentes, you know, an unreconstructed anti-Semite, pro-Nazi-ish, incredibly gifted social media person.

And indeed, founder of the Groupers, right?

Yeah, I'm a little vague on exactly what that is.

I think they are pretty racist, Nick Fuentes supporters, but Nick just did, Nick as if I know him, I've never come across him, just did a big interview with Tucker Carlson.

Yeah, no, I mean, huge, that's enormous resonance already in the Republican Party of people trying to reject this and sort of very clearly articulate the split in the Republican Party between the MA mega party. So Vance is the one is the guy who has to somehow navigate that for in order for him to become the the ultimate nominee. I mean, it's very it's very possible that that that Tucker is in this fight. I'm sure I'm sure he is whether he ultimately. Yes,

I'm sure whether he ultimately gets in or not. I'm sure he hasn't decided. But but he is whether he ultimately gets in or not. I'm sure he hasn't decided, but he is testing that clearly. And in order to do that, you would have to succeed to the right of JD Vance.

So they're all swimming as far right as they can. And then the goal will be to come a bit more central once the election hits.

Yeah, well I don't know. I mean the primary dynamic, you don't know what that is yet going to be, but the primary dynamic could be an extremely right dynamic, a mega dynamic. Those are the people who are most passionate about.

Do you think JD Vance could be popular enough?

I mean, I find him very uncharismatic. I find him a little creepy. I find that the cynicism kind of hardly below the surface. I think he's a phony. And I think that in today's world is something that's hard to navigate when you are not legit. On the other hand, to be perfectly honest, I think Tucker is a phony on this.

I mean, I know Tucker, I've known him for a long time. I'm actually quite fond of him on a personal basis. And we should spend some time on that, because I think that journey from country club Republican looking to far right, anti-Semite, racist, Nazi, whatever he is now, is an interesting journey. But I actually have spent a lot of time with Tucker, and I have always found him in person to be actually reasonable, funny, sensible, everything that he is not in his new persona.

So it's a very cynical way to whip up people who weren't always voters.

Yeah, and I think it's responding to Donald Trump, who is, and that think it's responding to Donald Trump, who is, and that's the confusing thing, because Donald Trump is the ultimate cynical person while at the same time actually being himself.

It's such a confusing combination.

It's as though what he is, he says, hey, I'm cynical, I would do anything. I'm not hiding this in in in any way. And the other people are saying, no, I'm not cynical. I am I truly believe this. And I am I am, you know, a, you know, a confirmed misogynist, racist, or whatever. And that's the different thing, that Trump is truly transparent, and these other people are not. And they're making it up and hiding.

Well, it'll be interesting to see whether or not people resonate with that or whether or not they understand the level of cynicism and whether or not they want that. Because at least Trump is an entertainer whereas the rest of them aren't. There's nothing entertaining about J.D. Vance. He's cringe.

Well, Tucker is an entertainer actually.

Well, Tucker is.

That's true. I mean, Tucker is, you know, Nick Fuentes is incredibly, I mean, you've got to stop yourself when you listen to him because you kind of go, oh, this is, you've got to stop yourself when you listen to him, because you kind of go, oh, this is, you know, and you're following along and thinking, you know, time is passing nicely, and I'm occupied. And then you think, oh my God, this is, you know, I mean, he's going to start killing

the Jews any minute. Let's go back to Nick Fuentes in another episode soon because he is this really emergent, kind of extraordinary, not to mention heinous voice.

We can do that. And also what I think is interesting is that politicians are now coming from different places. You don't have to do your years as a congressperson or as a senator. Social media is throwing up different voices.

They can build audiences, and that becomes enough.

Obviously, that's why a reality television star is the president of the United States.

Yeah, but that was at least 14 seasons of television. This is different. Nick Fuentes would never get on broadcast television, but it turns out he can thrive online. So can Tucker, who used to be on MSNBC, and then he was on Fox before he got tossed in the deal over the

Dominion voting machine settlement.

You forgot CNN.

Oh, and he was on CNN as well, was he? I'd forgotten he was on CNN. So these, these voices can't survive on the traditional broadcast media anymore, but they don't need it because they're online.

Traditional broadcast media voices can't survive on broadcast media anymore.

And now it's time for our Ask Melania segment. This is where we ask viewers and listeners to write in with your questions for Michael to ask Melania, our First Lady, under oath because he's begun an anti-slapsuit against her. Michael do

you just want to explain to people briefly what that is? Well, briefly, it is illegal in the state of New York to sue people for defamation with the only intent not of winning your lawsuit, but of shutting them up. And Melania Trump and her lawyers have threatened to sue me for $1 billion for what I have said about her relationship and Donald Trump's relationship to Jeffrey Epstein. And so instead of apologizing and paying them the $1 billion as they want, I in fact turned around and paying them the $1 billion as they want. I in fact turned around and sued them.

So this is the opportunity for you to ask your questions about the first lady. You can ask Michael to ask them on your behalf. So first question, and this is from the res Bob. Could the first lady as a wife have her husband, a president, committed?

If she could prove his mental incapacity, could Melania have him committed? It would also tear up the prenuptial.

And I actually think the answer to that is no.

It's a bit like a plot line from the diplomat.

Yeah, I think it is that, I mean, there is a constitutional framework in which to declare a precedent in confident, but it requires the cabinet, not the spouse.

And it's the 25th Amendment. Yes. Susan Zachrisson says, Virginia's suicide proves that all the money in the world can't heal trauma. And then Bettina8688 says I wouldn't be surprised if Trump demolishes the entire White House and relocates the United

States Capitol to Florida. How would you feel about that? Palm Beach? Well I

would be surprised. You would be surprised? You know I've been surprised

many times in this long saga. Well and it's one of the ways that Trump keeps people's interest right by surprising us. Unexpected moves every day possibly every hour. So Michael very exciting we will see each other live on Wednesday for our first live event. What are you wearing? I don't know what I'm wearing. I notice we're both in full colors today. What color brown is that? I got your pants wrong the other day. I said they were chocolate and you said no no they're tobacco and you were right. What color is that? I'm

afraid this may be tobacco too. Oh you're mainlining tobacco. There's a lot of tobacco going on. I don't know what color this is but I like it and it feels full. It's got a slight plaid to it.

But live seems to demand some other thought. I can't go like this live. Live is live.

But you're not going to wear your cardigans?

No, I think you have to show up on stage in a proper suit.

I'm quite surprised that no fashion designer has yet approached you to be in a campaign, a sort of New Yorker campaign where you're wearing a cardigan. I mean you're an unlikely model and yet everybody would recognize the value of a male cardigan. Are there cardigan makers? If there are I'm you know call me Mr. Rogers. I think there are probably a lot of ladies out there knitting you cardigans. Bring it on. And there might be gentlemen too actually I don't know I'm being sexist about that it's easy how one falls into these tropes. Anyway I don't

know what I'm wearing yet I'll think about it but I'm very much looking forward to it and getting questions from the audience too. Great I will see you on Wednesday. I will see you on Wednesday go back to your lovely house and some nice home-brewed coffee. And don't forget to subscribe to the Daily Beast, subscribe to the podcast, we are independent media so your support really means a lot to us as do your comments and leave us a review on Apple, Spotify and wherever else you get your podcasts. Thank you for joining us. If you have been as our first lady would have a say, be beast.

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And thank you, And thank you, Devin, Anna, Jessie.