The Problem With Saying ‘Just Divorce Him Already’ To Melania Trump And Usha Vance

The internet ― or at least a certain left-leaning, largely female segment of it ― is convinced that Melania Trump and Usha Vance need to divorce their husbands as soon as possible. (“Free Melania” is another common refrain.)

“Divorce him already, Usha,” a piece by Salon senior writer Amanda Marcotte was headlined last week, echoing the internet’s favorite “men-ain’t-shit” relationship advice.

For these onlookers, every candid photo is proof enough that these two women are utterly miserable with their husbands. Every one of their husbands’ eyeroll-inducing comments only furthers that belief, like President Donald Trump recently saying that he calls his wife “first lady” before bed, more as a boast to his ego than a compliment to her, or Vice President JD Vance remarking that his wife has “got three kids” as if he somehow forgot that they’re his, too.

In her piece, Marcotte says that the latest evidence that Usha Vance is disillusioned with second lady life is her recent appearance on Meghan McCain’s podcast.

“Vance clearly understood her assignment was to make it all seem like a great time — that leaving her career as a high-powered attorney to spend her days doing sub-Melania Trump public appearances about dull topics like the importance of reading for kids,” she wrote.

“But her acting chops weren’t up to it,” the writer continued. “Instead, audiences were treated to a one-hour hostage video, as the increasingly desperate McCain tried to get Vance to feign interest in her own life.”

Marcotte, and those who make similar arguments, are well-intentioned; Vance is indeed accomplished, and what she’s been called on to do in the last year ― fluff interviews, cleaning up her husband’s mess when he talks about “childless cat ladies” — is beneath her.

And it’s certainly unnerving that, in spite of being married to a woman of color (Usha Vance is Indian American) and having multiracial children, JD Vance has peddled the same racist claims about immigrants eating dogs as Trump, and openly supported a DOGE employee who posted racist comments (including one tweet about “normalizing Indian hate”).

But ultimately, Usha Vance ― and Melania Trump ― are grown women who knew what they were signing up for when they endorsed their husbands’ presidential aspirations. It’s fair to assume that they’ve co-signed it all, because both women spoke in support of their husbands’ campaigns at the Republican National Convention last summer.

Admittedly, though, it is really hard not to read into their few interviews and public appearances.

“I don’t know them personally but Melania appears to have made her deal transactionally while Usha appears to be more conflicted,” said Gloria Feldt, the author of “The War on Choice: The Right-Wing Attack on Women’s Rights and How to Fight Back.”

We saw that in January during the inauguration as the first and second couples heard Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde deliver an interfaith service at Washington National Cathedral. As Budde asked the president to have “mercy” on those “scared” about his return to the White House (LGBTQ+ children and undocumented immigrants), Vance and Trump fidgeted and looked on dismissively. Melania Trump looked as stoic as ever. Usha Vance was the only one whose gaze stayed focused on Budde throughout the sermon.

“Usha is the only one who felt…anything,” writer Feminista Jones posted on Threads at the time. “Pay close attention to Vance and Usha’s body language. She is NOT comfortable with him leaning her way to try to talk.”

Why are people so prone to wildly speculate about the marital happiness and political views of these two women? In part, it’s because FLOTUS and SLOTUS have been so tight-lipped in their roles.

“Political wives can be ciphers, and lack of information can encourage left-leaning observers to project their own political preferences,” said Cynthia Burack, a political theorist and professor emerita at Ohio State University.

The gender gap in voting and political perspectives is real ― U.S. women have become more liberal in the last decade, while men’s ideological views have remained more or less stable, according to Gallup ― so it can make sense to fantasize that the first and second lady are secretly liberal.

From the suffragette movement on, there’s been a long-established view of women as moderating forces who soften their husbands’ and fathers’ more aggressive political views.

“In the past, women were deprived of political agency but cast as upholders of morality,” Burack said.“Although feminists don’t endorse this conception of what it means to be a woman, they may well hope Republican leaders’ wives will leverage feminine moral authority to influence their husband.”

Many left-leaning women “hold onto a false belief, or at least a hope, that some kind of universal feminist sisterhood exists,” said Noelle Cook, the author of “The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging.”

But we saw how counterproductive that was during the 2024 presidential election: There was so much talk about Republican women secretly voting for Harris behind their husbands’ backs.

Election results suggested otherwise. Women on the right did, in fact, stay the course and vote Republican. Gen X white women actually increased their support for Trump, Cook noted.

“I can assure you that women on the right have strong beliefs of their own,” said Cook, who, in writing her book, followed women who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and spent months on right-wing online spaces frequented by women.

“They may emphasize different issues than men, but they are just as committed to the cause,” she told HuffPost. “Women on the right usually work in the background, in predominantly women-led spaces, focusing on issues tied to children and families since motherhood and caregiving are what’s seen as the ‘natural’ female sphere.”

In public spaces, the women soften their husbands’ rhetoric, Cook said. When JD Vance derided women without children as “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives,” for instance, his wife defended him in a Fox News interview.

“I took a moment to look and actually see what he had said and try to understand what the context was,” Usha Vance said about her husband’s remarks. “Because what he was really saying is that it can be really hard to be a parent in this country. And sometimes our policies are designed in a way that makes it even harder.”

When women speak mainly about protecting children and families, it creates the illusion that they aren’t truly extreme, Cook said.

“This kind of softening through women’s voices has been a regular feature of right-wing movements for more than a century. It’s key to how these movements mainstream their ideals,” she said. “Ignoring the agency of right-wing women is a mistake.”

Melania Trump may be harder to read politically. Soft isn’t a word most would associate with the former model from Slovenia. In 2011, she helped her husband spread the lie that former President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. In her 2024 memoir “Melania,” it surprised many that she wrote of favoring abortion rights, given her husband’s role in tearing them away from millions of women as president.

But her silence on nearly every other issue is deafening. In spite of being an immigrant herself, she’s largely looked the other way when it comes to immigrants’ rights. In his first term, when restrictive immigration policies included travel bans and border expulsions, she put out a generic, paper-thin statement of concern for the children and families affected at the U.S.-Mexico border.

She’s been tight-lipped as the current Trump administration began its aggressive campaign of ICE raids, detentions and deportations. And there’s no word on how she feels about her husband’s executive order to end birthright citizenship.

The idea that FLOTUS is a prisoner in the White House (she reportedly spends most of her time in New York or Mar-a-Lago in Florida) or that she resists her husband’s policies is largely baseless. Melania Trump may be an immigrant herself, but that doesn’t make her an ally.

Usha Vance may have Al Gore’s 1992 global-warming battle cry “Earth in the Balance” on her bookshelf, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t hold similar views to her husband on other issues. (Or that she’s not enjoying the perks of her position ― eight vacations in seven months ― while looking away from some of her husband’s uglier ideologies and policies.)

Ultimately, Feltdt thinks other women shouldn’t be surprised that wives of powerful men remain silent when those men attack women’s and minorities’ rights.

“Due to cultural conditioning, some women think, consciously or not, that their power is derived from aligning with powerful men,” she said.

“It’s fundamental to human behavior,” Feltdt explained. “Proximity to power can be intoxicating, especially to people who feel powerless themselves, or who ruthlessly see it as a way to gain power.”

So perhaps the internet’s pity towards FLOTUS and SLOTUS is misplaced. When somebody tells you, “I really don’t care. Do U?” maybe you ought to believe them.