 "JD Vance will be Trump’s vice president. What's his connection to India?")
Several American media houses have projected that Republican Donald Trump has defeated his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris.
Other news outlets had yet to call the race for Trump, but he appeared on the verge of winning after capturing the battleground states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia and holding leads in the other four, according to Edison Research.
Making a comeback four years after he left the White House, Trump claimed victory early Wednesday to a roaring crowd of supporters at the Palm Beach County Convention Centre.
Flanked by Republican leaders and members of Trump’s family, he said, “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
He also heaped praise on his running mate JD Vance and his Indian-American wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance .
“I want to be the first one to congratulate — now I can say Vice President-Elect JD Vance. And his remarkable and beautiful wife, Usha Vance,” he said. Both were present on the dais along with Trump’s wife, Melania Trump.
After Trump announced him to chants from the crowd, JD Vance told supporters, “We just witnessed the greatest political comeback in the history of the United States of America. Under President Trump’s leadership, we’re never going to stop fighting for you, for your dreams, and for the future of your children. And after the greatest political comeback in American history, we’re going to lead the greatest economic comeback in American history."
Vance has a strong connection to India beyond his wife. Here’s all we know about it.
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The Indian connection
JD Vance, 40, is an Ohio Senator who has transformed from a critic of Trump into a superfan completely in line with policies.
In his speech at the Republican National Convention, JD shared his story of growing up poor in Kentucky and Ohio, his mother addicted to drugs and his father absent.
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More ShortsHe later joined the Marines, graduated from Yale Law School, and went on to the highest levels of US politics — an embodiment of an American dream he said is now in short supply, according to The Associated Press.
JD tied the knot with Indian-American lawyer Usha Vance in 2014, with a Hindu priest presiding over a separate ceremony. The couple has three children together: sons Ewan and Vivek, and daughter Mirabel.
The two first met in a discussion group at Yale Law School in 2013 on “social decline in white America.” In his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, JD describes her as “bright, hard-working, tall, and beautiful,” adding that she has a great sense of humour and a blunt-speaking approach. After just one date, he broke all of his dating rules and proclaimed his love for her, marking the beginning of their relationship at the end of their first year.
He also called her his “Yale spirit guide,” helping him navigate life at the elite university where they met. “She instinctively understood the questions I didn’t even know to ask, and she always encouraged me to seek opportunities that I didn’t know existed,” he wrote, as per CNN.
Her Indian family also provided Vance with a sense of belonging and fresh insights that he had been lacking. When Vance recalled his first Thanksgiving with her family, he was moved by their sincerity and affection.
During her speech at the Republican National Convention, Usha Vance described her husband as “a meat and potatoes kind of a guy,” who adapted to her vegetarian diet and “learned to cook Indian food from her mother.”
Also read: Why is JD Vance, Donald Trump's pick for VP, bad news for Ukraine?
Spiritual guidance
In an interview with Fox News weeks after being selected as Trump’s running mate, Vance claimed that his wife’s Hindu beliefs helped him overcome obstacles in both his personal and professional lives and rediscover his own Catholic religion.
The 38-year-old, who was raised Protestant, began considering conversion to Catholicism in 2016. He claimed that his Hindu wife, Usha, supported him in his quest to become a Christian.
“I was never baptised. I was raised Christian but never baptised. I was first baptised in 2018. Usha was actually raised non-Christian. But I remember when I started to re-engage with my own faith, Usha was very supportive,” said Vance.
Usha, who grew up in a “religious household,” said she encouraged her husband to embrace religion as a tool for self-discovery in part because of the influence of her parents. “My parents are Hindu and that’s one of the things that made them such good parents and really good people. And I have seen the power of that in my own life,” she said.
“And I knew that JD was searching for something. This just felt right for him," she added.
Regarding family matters, Usha stated that despite coming from two different faiths, there are some things that the couple “just agrees on.” “The answer is, we just talk a lot,” she said.
US Presidential election
Donald Trump has won Pennsylvania , Georgia and North Carolina, capturing three of the seven heavily contested battlegrounds and coming within a few electoral votes of winning the presidency.
Republicans reclaimed control of the Senate, picking up seats in West Virginia and Ohio.
Top House races are focused in New York and California, where Democrats are trying to claw back some of the 10 or so seats where Republicans have made surprising gains in recent years.
Several news outlets had yet to call the race for Trump.
Harris did not speak to her supporters, who had gathered at her alma mater Howard University. Her campaign co-chair, Cedric Richmond, briefly addressed the crowd after midnight, saying Harris would speak publicly on Wednesday.
“We still have votes to count,” he said.
With inputs from agencies
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