Trumpworld wives share the same 'eye-wateringly boring' problem: report

Policy reporter Gaby Del Valle, of The Verge, says JD Vance’s wife Usha Vance has a new podcast: Storytime with the Second Lady, and “it’s exactly what it sounds like.”

She reads a short book. Preferably to children. Ta da.

“She’s … the latest conservative spouse to pivot to content creation,” said Del Valle. “It’s a new front of the ongoing culture wars: Instead of trying to win back supposedly liberal institutions, the right is hell-bent on creating its own. And if these institutions reinforce conservative gender norms, that’s all the better.”

Vance’s content is harmless enough but other wives of other men in President Donald Trump’s circle are also eager to become creators. Katie Miller, wife of Trump adviser Stephen Miller, launched her own podcast last year after leaving the Department of Government Efficiency. Erika Kirk, meanwhile, assumed the role of her late husband’s Turning Point USA media empire after his assassination. But unlike Kirk, both Miller and Vance are creating content that is “apolitical on its face,” said Del Valle.

“Miller and Vance’s seemingly banal podcasts are indicative of conservatives’ efforts to create a parallel media ecosystem, a project that signals their aspiration for cultural relevance that they feel they’ve been denied by the mainstream,” said Del Valle. “… The most interesting thing about Vance and Miller’s podcasts is that they aren’t interesting at all. Episodes of Storytime with the Second Lady are short: there’s a brief introduction, a reading, and that’s it. Miller does long interviews, but as Tess Owen wrote in Slate, her podcast is “eye-wateringly boring.”

Del Valle said Miller’s pick of guests appear to be the lieutenants of the Trump kingdom: Elon Musk, FBI director Kash Patel, recently ousted Attorney General Pam Bondi, along with right-wing talking heads like anti-vaxxer Jenny McCarthy; fitness MAGA Jillian Michaels and MAGA neonate Nicki Minaj.

“Miller’s latest guest is NBA player Tristan Thompson, who is perhaps most famous for cheating on Khloé Kardashian. (He is, for the record, good friends with Eric Trump and averse to repeating outfits,)” added Del Valle, while warning audience members to expect “hard-hitting questions” such as: Is a hot dog a sandwich?”

“There is a thriving right-wing “womanosphere” as embodied by magazines like Evie and The Conservateur and a litany of podcasts including The Brett Cooper Show, Alex Clark’s Culture Apothecary, and Allie Beth Stuckey’s Relatable,” said Del Valle. “But right-wing media relies on the illusion of rejection and transgression — Miller needs to position herself as a conservative lighthouse in a sea of liberal lifestyle content, because she has nothing else to differentiate her from the crowd. Similarly, Vance’s podcast is just the latest among many storytime podcasts, some of which are overtly political.”

What they all appear to have in common is a clingy, desperate kind of need.

“You’d be forgiven for thinking that some on the right want nothing more than to be liked. They aren’t content with power; they want cultural cachet, and their politics of resentment are often born of an understanding that this desire will always remain out of reach,” said Del Valle. “… The Vances were reportedly hurt by the negative reaction to the film adaptation of Hillbilly Elegy. The vice president and second lady are often heckled in public: they were booed at the recent winter Olympics in Milan and jeered at the Kennedy Center.”

Last year, the Millers fled behind the gates of a posh army base to avoid critics.

Unable to win over the public, Del Salle says “these political wives have chosen to carve out spaces for themselves in conservative media.

But some of them are not nice people, reports Del Valle.

“Miller was tasked with defending the administration’s family separation policy. She was such a hard-liner that her supervisor once sent her to the border in the hopes that it would make her more compassionate — which, Miller later told journalist Jacob Soboroff, ‘didn’t work.’”

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