Usha Vance hasn't fully Maga-fied herself yet. Is she having moments of doubt? | Arwa Mahdawi

Usha Vance is a very clever woman with terrible taste in men. The Yale and Cambridge-educated lawyer quit her job at a prestigious DC firm the same day her husband was picked to be Donald Trump’s running mate. She trailed after him on the campaign trail, smiling for the cameras. A former Democrat, she aligned herself with Trump, a man her husband once called “America’s Hitler”. In exchange for her loyalty, the second lady now has a taxpayer-funded mansion, regular trips in a private jet, and a husband who acknowledges white supremacist attacks on her – saying “Don’t attack my wife” – but has failed to condemn them head on. Speaking during an event at the University of Mississippi last Wednesday, the vice-president said that he hoped his wife, raised in a Hindu household, would convert to Christianity. JD, by the way, used to be an atheist, then converted to Catholicism in 2019, saying he “really liked that the Catholic church was just really old”. JD’s comments about Usha’s Hinduism received a lot of backlash, including from a rightwing Canadian commentator who posted (then deleted): “it’s weird to throw your wife’s religion under the bus, in public, for a moment’s acceptance by groypers.” (That’s a name for those who follow far-right white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes.) In a reply, the vice-president called this comment “disgusting … anti-Christian bigotry”. You know what seems disgusting, JD: saying that you hope the woman you married in a Christian-Hindu ceremony abandons something apparently important to her. Usha Vance is no victim. She’s ambitious and a major force in JD’s meteoric rise. She’s just as implicated in America’s slide towards autocracy and embrace of bigotry as he is. Still, you have to wonder if she has moments of doubt. Especially as she hasn’t fully Maga-fied herself yet: unlike many in Trump’s orbit, she hasn’t succumbed to the conspicuous cosmetic surgery known as Mar-a-Lago face. In an interview with The Free Press in April she said she has no plans to dye her naturally greying hair. “People don’t seem to care all that much what I look like,” she said. I’ll tell you what you look like to me, Usha: a woman happy to trade her dignity for power. • Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist and the author of Strong Female Lead Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.