Vice President JD Vance called Jen Psaki’s comments that his wife was being held captive and needed to be saved from him “disgraceful.”
Reporters asked Vance for his response to Psaki’s comment while on a tarmac heading back to the United States after a two-day trip to Israel. His wife, Second Lady Usha Vance, accompanied him.
“I think it’s disgraceful, but of course the second lady can speak for herself, and I’m very lucky to have a wonderful wife,” Vance said. “And I know — or at least I hope — that my wife feels the same about me. I’m very lucky to go on this journey with a very loving wife.
“We’re going to keep on serving the country together and I’m honored to have Usha by my side, on this trip in particular, but always.”
Psaki, who served as former President Joe Biden’s White House press secretary, made the comments about JD Vance and Usha Vance this week on the “I’ve Had It” podcast.
“I always wonder what’s going on in the mind of his wife,” Psaki said, referring to the second lady. “Like, are you OK? Please blink four times. Come over here, we’ll save you.”
Psaki also called Vance the “Manchurian candidate,” a reference to the 1962 film and its 2004 remake in which the vice presidential candidate is actually a puppet for an enemy power. Psaki said that Vance “wants to be president more than anything else.”
“And that he’s willing to do anything to get there,” she said. “And your whole iteration you just outlined, I mean, he’s scarier in certain ways in some ways. And he’s young and ambitious and agile in the sense that he’s a chameleon who makes himself whatever he thinks the audience wants to hear from him.”
Vance is the apparent successor to President Donald Trump, who has hinted that Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio would be the Republican ticket for 2028.
“Which one of you is going to be at the top of the ticket?’ Trump asked Vance and Rubio earlier this year, according to a source. “I used to think it would be Vance-Rubio, but maybe it will be Rubio-Vance.”
A White House official told the Daily Mail that Trump was simply teasing Rubio and Vance with his talks of 2028, adding that Trump has made himself “pretty clear” that he thinks Vance has a good chance in 2028.
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