SerpApi.Org
Barack Obama called out Vice President JD Vance’s rigid stance on US citizenship while being married to Usha Vance — the daughter of an Indian immigrant family.
The former US President took a jab at Vance’s marriage to Usha while discussing President Donald Trump’s push to limit birthright citizenship and MAGA’s notions about who gets to identify as an American.
Obama spoke with author Malcolm Gladwell on his podcast and said, “At least one of our major parties has been captured by politics that is not that subtle about suggesting that ‘we the people’ means a certain kind of people.”
“When you have the vice president—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, how long they’ve been here, despite him being married to… a daughter of an immigrant himself, that echoes, then, ideas about who can be a citizen, who belongs, who gets to make decisions,” Obama said.
According to The Daily Beast, the 64-year-old former President appeared to be referring to Vance’s speech at a conservative think tank last year, where he said, “America is not just an idea. We’re a particular place, with a particular people, and a particular set of beliefs and way of life.”
In his address, Vance pushed back against the idea of the United States being a “purely creedal nation”. He criticized those he claimed think that only people who believe in “progressive liberalism” are American.
“I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a h-ll of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong,” Vance, 41, stated.
Gladwell opined that Vance’s own marriage to Second Lady Usha Vance is an example of how the US has now moved “from malice to hypocrisy.” The author argued that a century ago, a Vice President could not have argued for nativism while himself being married to an immigrant couple’s daughter.
Vance has been one of the strongest voices that have rallied behind President Trump’s push to limit birthright citizenship. In January 2025, just days after being sworn in as President for his second term, the 80-year-old POTUS passed an executive order seeking to end automatic birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants and temporary visa holders in the US.
He argued that such a provision in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution acts as a “magnet” for illegal immigration.
His order sparked heavy scrutiny and backlash, with many arguing that it might put Usha Vance’s citizenship at risk as well. Usha Vance received American citizenship at birth after her Indian parents immigrated to the country, but her parents’ immigration status at the time of her birth is still unknown.
However, last month, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s executive order. It upheld the 14th Amendment, which gives automatic American citizenship to nearly all babies born in the US.
Vance said that the ruling was a “major mistake.” Trump took to Truth Social and said that the ruling is “too bad for our country” and even suggested that Congress should move to end the Constitutional law through legislation.
