The seemingly more-than-casual hug shared between Vice President J.D. Vance and Erika Kirk, the widow of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, at a gathering in Mississippi days ago is turning into more than just unfounded fodder for online commenters that Donald Trump’s running mate is having an affair, according to Salon’s Amanda Marcotte.

As she wrote on Monday, it brought to the surface the prospect that Vance’s wife Usha might be the biggest “political liability” he will face as he attempts to assume the MAGA mantle from Donald Trump.

According to Marcotte, the viral hug, with Kirk’s hand in Vance’s hair and the veep placing his hand on her hip, set off a flurry of “tongue-wagging” among observers which, along with recent Vance comments about his wife’s religion, has magnified that fact that Usha Vance may not fit the MAGA mold, in part because of her skin color.

Pointing to Vance telling a TPUSA attendee, “I believe in the Christian Gospel, and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way,” Marcotte wrote, “Vance’s marriage is an increasingly poor fit for his political brand, which has become increasingly based on praising the virtues of white supremacy and retrograde gender roles.”

Noting, “In Republican politics, especially in the MAGA era, a politician’s wife is an important part of establishing his reputation as a “real' man to a base who eschews thinking and nuance in favor of emotional reactions,” she added, “Based on the xenophobia and anti-South Asian sentiment that courses through the MAGA body politic, the vice president could be better marketed as President Donald Trump‘s successor if he had a wife who looked more like Erika Kirk.”

“When it comes to his wife’s religion, Vance said she has ‘free will’ — an admission he made in his usual self-congratulatory tone. This view, though, is increasingly at odds with what the MAGA base wants from their leaders, especially the radicalized young men that Vance is doing his best to court — along with far-right authoritarians in Silicon Valley who have funded him every step of the way,” she added before pointing out the white Christian “tradwife” is the current favored model of partner.

She elaborated, “A hug and a couple of weird statements are don’t quite justify the widespread speculation that Vance wants to dump his wife to marry someone who better fits the ‘tradwife’ model. But the rumors reflect a much deeper reality that people are exactly right to perceive: Vance is a soulless striver who will sell off anything if he thought it would give him more power.”

According to the columnist, Vance now finds himself in a “pickle.”

“Having burdened himself with a wife in his youth who quickly became unacceptable in the political fantasy he is trying to create, one that is increasingly indistinguishable from Nazi propaganda imagining a ‘homeland’ populated only by strong-jawed Aryan men and their buxom blonde wives,” she suggested that if “Vance doesn’t like these rumors about Erika Kirk, maybe he should pause to consider why they are just so easy for people to believe.”

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