JD Vance has called far right commentator Nick Fuentes ‘a total loser’ over racist comments about his Indian wife Usha.
Furthermore, Vance has said that Donald Trump – who previously dined with Fuentes – has criticized the far right commentator.
Fuentes stoked ire on the right when he criticized Vance for having an Indian wife, wondering if ‘we really expect that [Vance] who has an Indian wife and named their kid Vivek is going to support white identity’.
Vance tore into Fuentes in an interview Sunday, saying he ‘disavows’ him but wants to keep focus on the important issues in his and Trump’s campaign against Kamala Harris.
He said of Fuentes: ‘Of course Donald Trump has criticized this person. Look, I think the guy’s a total loser. Certainly, I disavow him’.
Vance told CBS that he thinks the best policy to stop the likes of Fuentes is to ‘ignore’ him.
‘But if you ask me what I care more about, is it a person attacking me personally, or is it government policy that discriminates based on race? That’s what I really worry about, is bad government policy that harms people based on their immutable characteristics,’ he said.
He acknowledged, however, that ‘a lot of losers are going to attack me and attack my family’.
‘I think the proper response to them is to ignore them. Don’t feed the trolls, and they largely go away,’ he added.
Trump had dinner with Fuentes and Kanye West at his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022, prompting widespread condemnation from both parties.
The Justice Department in a 2021 complaint referred to Fuentes, an alt-right figure, as a ‘white supremacist’ and ‘America First’ podcaster.’
In an episode of his podcast, Fuentes ‘jokingly’ denied the Holocaust and compared Jews who were burnt in Nazi concentration camps to cookies in an oven.
One source who spoke with NBC News told the outlet Trump was taken by Fuentes who: ‘presented as statistician’.
They added: ‘He was very knowledgeable of polls and Trump’s campaign. Trump was very impressed but Trump didn’t know who he was.’
‘This is a f***ing nightmare,’ said one longtime Trump adviser who spoke anonymously.
Ye also confirmed that Trump was ‘impressed’ with Fuentes in a video posted to Twitter.
‘So Trump is really impressed with Nick Fuentes, and Nick Fuentes, unlike so many of the lawyers, and so many of the people that he was left with on his 2020 campaign, he’s actually a loyalist’ Ye said.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he didn’t know Fuentes previous to the meeting, and offered an explanation on the meeting with the rapper.
‘Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, was asking me for advice concerning some of his difficulties, in particular having to do with his business,’ Trump wrote in the post.
‘We also discussed, to a lesser extent, politics, where I told him he should definitely not run for President, ‘any voters you may have should vote for TRUMP.
‘Anyway, we got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’ Why wouldn’t I agree to meet? Also, I don’t know Nick Fuentes.’
West would go on to hail Fuentes as a Trump ‘loyalist,’ touting his support of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, by citizens loyal to the then outgoing president.
Many subsequently took to Twitter to reveal their unease at the sighting, as both have recently gone on anti-Semitic rants.
Fuentes started gaining notoriety in 2017 after he left Boston University following claims that he was receiving ‘threats’ after attending a white supremacist rally, Unite the Right, in Charlottesville, Virginia, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
He also hosts a live-stream show called America First, which has a ‘cult-like following,’ according to ADL, and his fans are called Groypers.
The young man uses his various platforms to push anti-Semitic and racist comments and has denied the Holocaust on multiple occasions.
During one of his live-stream episodes, he reportedly compared Jews being incinerated in concentration camps to cookies in the oven.
Fuentes’ platform largely pushes to preserve white, European-American identity and culture and pushes the conspiracy theory that the white race is impending destruction through white genocide.
He once said: ‘I don’t see Jews as Europeans and I don’t see them as part of Western civilization, particularly because they are not Christians.’
Usha Vance is an Ivy League educated litigator who once clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts.
The pair first met while they were both students at Yale Law School in 2013. In his book Hillbilly Elegy, Vance describes her as his ‘Yale spirit guide.’
They married on year out of law school in 2014 and had their first child, Ewan Blaine in 2017.
They also have a second son, Vivek, and welcomed a daughter Mirabel in December 2021. The couple are raising their three children in Cincinnati.
The daughter of Indian immigrants, born Usha Chilukuri, Vance was raised in the suburbs of San Diego by a mechanical engineer and biologist. She has said she was raised in a religious Hindu family.