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White House Locks Down Vance Video Before Critics Pile On

The vice president’s latest appearance was a softball.

JD Vance’s recent media blitz has landed him a guest spot on one of the hottest literary shows in Trumpworld.

The vice president, 41, paused promoting his new book—and trying to salvage whatever truce is left between the United States and Iran—to appear on Second Lady Usha Vance’s show, Storytime with the Second Lady.

The special Father’s Day edition of the second lady’s children’s show was published to YouTube on Sunday morning. But before it went live, the video’s comments were locked.

Vance is no stranger to the pressure cooker, having spent part of the week in the hot seat on The View and even fielding tough questions from Donald Trump’s favorite network, Fox News.

But a video of Vance reading several passages from Winnie-the-Pooh and engaging in small talk with his pregnant wife was closed to comments.

“So, um, you of course are very into teaching our kids how to read, which is very cool and I’m very excited about,” Vance told his wife, whom he met at Yale Law School.

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“But the downside of it is that the more advanced they get, the less that they want mom and dad to read to them,” he said, to which Usha Vance said, “Luckily, there’s going to be a new baby for you to read to.”

“That’s why I so desperately wanted to have a fourth baby,” the vice president said.

Vance’s episode was the ninth installment of Usha Vance’s show, which averages a few thousand views per episode and has featured guests including actress Cheryl Hines, a NASA Artemis II astronaut, and her own mother.

It’s not clear whether Vance himself is a devoted viewer. If he is, however, some episodes might raise an eyebrow or two.

The Daily Beast’s political newsletter, The Swamp, has reported extensively on Usha’s Easter eggs throughout the series that appear to be at odds with her husband’s agenda.

In one episode, for example, Usha Vance’s mother, microbiologist Lakshmi Chilukuri, reads How the Camel Got His Hump. When the reading concludes, Vance asks her mother if she believes the story of how the camel got his hump is accurate.

“Well,” the microbiologist says, “There’s a whole science called evolution that tells you how animals develop the way they did.”

While this White House is no fan of evolution, that’s not all. Vance also prominently displays Treasure Island on a bookshelf. Its author, 19th-century Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, once told his father he had rejected Christianity and did not believe in God.

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There is also Rocco Travels with the Presidents!, written by child author Rocco Smirne and his co-writer and mother, Arioth Harrison Smirne, who works at the White House Historical Association. In it, a young boy rides in Joe Biden’s Corvette, bicycles with Jimmy Carter, boards Air Force One with Bill Clinton, and walks toward the Beast with Barack Obama.

Trump is absent.

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Laura EspositoBreaking News Reporter

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