Former President Barack Obama took a rare swipe at JD Vance over his statements on immigrants that ignore the second lady’s life story.
Speaking with Malcolm Gladwell on his podcast about post-Civil War Reconstruction’s impact on America, Obama criticized the MAGA politician for his nativist stance on immigration, pointing out that Vance’s own wife, Usha Vance, is the child of immigrants, per Daily Beast reporting.
When asked by Gladwell about his thoughts on the “general project of multiracial democracy now,” Obama said: “One of our major parties is captured by a politics that is not that subtle about suggesting that ‘we the people’ means a certain kind of people.
“When you have the current Vice President making a speech that is basically a blood and soil version of ‘we the people.’ That it matters who your parents were and how long they’ve been here. Despite him being married to…the daughter of an immigrant himself.”
Vance’s wife, Usha, whom he met at Yale Law School and wed in an interfaith ceremony, is the child of two immigrants from India who were living in the U.S. when she was born, automatically granting her U.S. citizenship. Their immigration status at the time of her birth is currently unknown. The Trump administration has sought to end birthright citizenship, which grants citizenship to anyone born in the country, no matter their parents’ legal status.
The speech that Obama was referring to was likely Vance’s speech to the conservative Claremont Institute think tank in 2025.
In the speech, the 41-year-old Vice President said that America is a place with a “particular set of beliefs and way of life.” He added, that people with ancestors who fought in the Civil War have “a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong,” as covered by the Daily Beast.
Despite emerging as a moderate anti-Trump voice in 2016, JD Vance has become an increasingly MAGA voice in the Republican Party. He was highly critical of the recent Supreme Court decision to maintain birthright citizenship; the Constitutional right to grant American citizenship to anyone born in the country.
The Trump Administration was taken to court for attempting to strip citizenship from people born in the U.S. whose parents were not already citizens at their birth. The court narrowly voted against the White House, citing the explicit text of the Constitution.
Vance called that decision a “huge mistake,” according to the Daily Beast.
The 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship to enslaved people, was written during the Reconstruction era was discussed by Obama and Gladwell. It was intended to give citizenship, and therefore voting rights and equal protection under the law. Critics of birthright citizenship say its definition is now being exploited by people who want to give their children American citizenship merely by being born in the country.
The pair joked about how 100 years ago, before the case that solidified the right to interracial marriage, a Vice President could not make a nativist speech whilst being married to a woman of Indian descent.
Now, as Obama put it: “Hypocrisy is progress.”
Despite his frustrations with the current administration, Obama had an ultimately uplifting message for Gladwell and his listeners, saying: “I would argue that the progress that we’ve seen over your lifetime and mine in creating a multiracial democracy, that stuff sticks. And that’s progress.
“And so I don’t get cynical and…I didn’t subscribe to the idea that because this has always been a theme in America, because we will often be disappointed by how American society responds to racial discrimination and injustice, because at any moment that kind of caste thinking can flare up and be dangerous and violent and cruel, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have evidence of a better version of America.
“We have evidence of it. We’ve seen it.”
