During Tuesday’s episode of "The View," Sunny Hostin and Joy Behar criticized second lady Usha Vance, raising questions about her values, her marriage, and her motivations.
Behar said Vance appeared "addicted" to power and the benefits that come with it. Hostin delivered an extended commentary arguing that the Yale-educated attorney had set aside her principles to remain close to the White House.
The provocation, apparently, was an NBC News interview Usha Vance gave on Monday in which she addressed her political evolution with a composure that seems to have irritated the daytime panel.
Vance told NBC News:
"I do feel very comfortable in that no one has ever asked me to engage in any kind of litmus test on anything. And what I've found is that I was myself in 2014. I can be myself today. And I feel very comfortable in that world."
She also pushed back against the idea that she had undergone some dramatic ideological transformation:
"I don't feel like I have to walk around pretending anything of any sort. I didn't think I had to do that [in 2014], actually. Sometimes I have thoughts that fit very comfortably into one side or another. Sometimes I have views that are way more idiosyncratic."
That's the interview that launched the Tuesday pile-on.
In her opening remarks, Hostin highlighted that Usha Vance remained a registered Democrat through 2014, Fox News reported. She followed this by arguing that there is a clear divide between that political background and her present position alongside Vice President JD Vance.
"And she's sitting there, she's, you know, married to the vice president. She was a Democrat in 2014, she's pregnant now, but I will say that it just couldn't be me. It wouldn't be me. I think our country's in an existential crisis. This is not a game. I think your values need to align, especially at times like this, and some things are dealbreakers."
Hostin also referenced JD Vance's past criticism of President Trump and quoted Vance once saying that he hoped Usha would "come to see" and believe in the Christian gospel. She framed this as further evidence of hypocrisy, then posed the question directly to Behar: had Usha Vance done "that 180" for power?
Behar didn't hesitate. She said JD Vance now kisses Trump's "butt every day," then turned to Usha: "Of course! She's addicted to the power also, and the perks."
Hostin piled on further:
"So that feels like hypocrisy, because this is a smart woman. She is a lawyer. She was Yale-educated. I believe that's where they met. This is a woman that had a life of her own and now all of a sudden, you know, maybe not so much. I don't know."
Read that again. A woman who graduated from Yale Law School, clerked at the highest levels of the legal profession, and is now raising three children with a fourth on the way while serving as second lady of the United States somehow no longer has "a life of her own." Hostin seems confused about what independence actually looks like.
Credit where it's due: Whoopi Goldberg declined to join the attack. She noted that Usha Vance has "three kids and another on the way" and said something her co-hosts might consider writing on a Post-it note: "Her life is her life, our lives are our lives. We all are trying to do the best we can. I'm not mad at any woman who's trying to live her life. I'm not mad."
In a show that routinely lectures America about empowering women, one host managed to actually do it. The other two spent their airtime psychoanalyzing a pregnant woman's marriage and career choices because she doesn't share their politics.
While "The View" panelists diagnosed her motivations from a studio couch, Usha Vance announced a new podcast on Monday called "Storytime with the Second Lady." The show will feature her reading popular children's books aloud alongside different guests.
A children's literacy podcast. That's the sinister power grab that has Hostin and Behar rattled.
This segment is useful not because of what it reveals about Usha Vance, but because of what it reveals about the people attacking her. The logic runs like this: if you are educated, female, and once registered as a Democrat, you owe permanent allegiance to the left. Deviate, and your intelligence becomes evidence against you. Your accomplishments become ammunition. Your marriage becomes suspect.
Hostin doesn't actually engage with anything Vance said in the NBC interview. She doesn't explain why a person's political views at some point before 2014 should be permanently binding. She doesn't grapple with the possibility that a Yale-trained lawyer might have arrived at her current position through, say, thought. Instead, the explanation must be addiction, corruption, or spousal submission.
This is what the left's feminism looks like in practice. Choice is sacred, but only the right choices. Independence is celebrated, but only if it leads you to the approved conclusions. A woman with an Ivy League degree, a legal career, a growing family, and a public platform isn't empowered. She's a hostage who doesn't know it yet.
The vice president's office did not immediately return a request for comment on the segment. They probably had better things to do.
Meanwhile, the second lady is reading children's books. Her critics are reading her mind. One of these is a more productive use of a Tuesday.