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If you remember, rumors of the Vice President and his wife splitting up first sparked in late October when photos at a Turning Point USA event of JD hugging Erika Kirk, the wife of slain right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk, went viral.
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Then, when the Vice President’s wife visited military training facility Camp Lejeune alongside Melania Trump, she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring.
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A spokesperson for Usha told People, she’s “a mother of three young children, who does a lot of dishes, gives lots of baths, and forgets her ring sometimes.”
Now, in an interview with NBC News, JD finally addressed the speculation that there are marital troubles in the Vance household. “I think that we kind of get a kick out of it,” the Vice President said.
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JD appeared to be unfazed by the recent negative attention on his marriage to Usha. “With anything in life, you take the good with the bad. You accept that there are some sacrifices and there are some very good things that come along with it, too,” he added.
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“Our marriage is as strong as it’s ever been,” the Vice President said.
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According to JD, the Second Lady of the United States has navigated the speculation with ease and effectively acclimated to her role. “I think Usha’s really taken to it,” he said. “It’s been kind of cool to see how she’s developed and evolved in this new role.”
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In fact, he noted that he and Usha have found humor in the rumors sparked by her absence of a wedding ring. “She was like, ‘Oh, if I don’t go back and get them, there’s going to be some ridiculous psycho who talks about it on social media,'” JD remembered. “And I was like, let them. It’s not even worth the trip to run back upstairs. So we actually have a little bit of fun with it. And we thought that whole viral social media cycle was kind of funny.”
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One area that’s been trickier to navigate is the focus on the rest of the Vance family. JD and Usha have been married since 2014 and share three children: two sons, Ewan, 8, and Vivek, 5, and a daughter, Mirabel, 3. “I think that there’s always a limelight on the kids, and that’s both good and bad,” JD said in the interview.
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“Our 8-year-old really doesn’t like it. He wants to have as private of a life as possible. When we come to an event in the White House and he sees the cameras, he doesn’t love it, and so we try to keep him out of that limelight as much as possible.”
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For his younger son, it’s a bit different. “On the flip side, our 5-year-old, who’s a little bit more like me — he probably likes it too much. He loves the fact that wherever he goes, people treat him very specially.”
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“There are certainly ways in which it’s difficult on the family,” JD said. “I’m not going to pretend that it isn’t. But it’s the sacrifice that we signed up for.”
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