Usha Vance told friends Trump appalled her. Now she’s working to elect him.

The potential second lady found Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 “deeply disturbing,” a friend said. But ambition and devotion to her husband ultimately drove her to a place in the former president’s campaign.



Usha Vance at the Republican National Convention on July 17. (Joel Angel Juarez for The Washington Post)

By Peter Jamison, Beth Reinhard, Hannah Natanson and Nicole Markus
July 27, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

During her rise through America’s most prestigious schools, law firms and judicial clerkships, Usha Vance rarely — if ever — volunteered her opinions on the nation’s bitterly partisan politics to friends and colleagues. … But she did express revulsion at former president Donald Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021.

Vance told friends she was outraged by Trump’s incitement of the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol and lamented the social breakdown that fueled his political support, according to one friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. Her view at the time contrasts with the later pronouncements of her husband and Trump’s newly minted running mate, JD Vance, who has downplayed the storming of the Capitol and called participants who were jailed “political prisoners.”

“Usha found the incursion on the Capitol and Trump’s role in it to be deeply disturbing,” the friend recalled. “She was generally appalled by Trump, from the moment of his first election.”

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Aaron Schaffer and Alice Crites contributed to this report.

By Peter Jamison, Beth Reinhard, Hannah Natanson and Nicole Markus