The Left’s Ugly Double Standard for Conservative Women

The Left’s Ugly Double Standard for Conservative Women

By Sarah Katherine Sisk

Following a recent comment from Vice President JD Vance criticizing Michigan Democrat Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed over his past remarks supporting Sharia law, El-Sayed responded by dragging Vance’s wife into the dispute.

“So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no…” El-Sayed posted on X, implying that Vance’s late grandfather would not have approved of his granddaughter-in-law because of her Indian heritage.

In her typical fashion, Usha met the insult with far more grace than it deserved.

“I have to admit I kind of laughed,” she said when asked about it. Although she never met Vance’s grandparents, she said she knows and loves the children they raised, including his mother, aunt, and uncle. “They have never been anything but incredibly loving,” she added of the Vances.

More than just a one-off comment, El-Sayed’s ugly remark is indicative of the repulsive double standard that Democrats have when it comes to women in politics (that is, when Democrats can even decide if they know what a woman is).

For women on the left, Democrats and the liberal media treat them like infallible heroes who are “brave” and “courageous” merely for existing as a female in the political space. As Americans saw first-hand during the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, any criticism of female Democrats – even over legitimate policy matters – is immediately denounced as sexism or misogyny.

But while claiming to be champions of female empowerment and respecting women, the left also reserves some of its nastiest attacks for conservative women. The media ignored El-Sayed’s disgraceful attack on Usha Vance, but it’s a safe bet that a similar insult from a Republican against a Democrat’s wife would have been met with a week-long media outrage cycle.

The left especially despises Usha Vance because she’s everything that the modern Democrat Party claims to represent – yet she’s married to the second-in-command to President Trump. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Usha graduated from Yale Law School, built a career as a civil litigator, and clerked for three federal judges, including Chief Justice John Roberts. But liberals consistently smear and deride her for choosing a path that didn’t involve becoming another left-wing judicial activist.

One of the ugliest examples of this pattern was a Slate article published after the Vances announced they were expecting their fourth child.

The author of the article, Heather Schwedel, speculated that because JD Vance could not have “a white wife standing next to him” before a possible 2028 presidential campaign, “the next best thing is a pregnant one.”

While claiming to be champions of “diversity” and “inclusion,” liberals apparently can’t imagine that a white man and an Indian woman could actually be in love and have many children just because they want a large family. Schwedel’s cynical take reveals more about the moral bankruptcy of the left than it does the Vances’ marriage.

Former Biden White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki took a similarly detestable approach during an October 2025 appearance on the progressive “I’ve Had It” podcast. While attacking JD Vance as an ambitious political “chameleon,” Psaki suddenly turned on his wife.

“I always wonder what’s going on in the mind of his wife,” Psaki said. “Like, are you OK? Please blink four times. Come over here. We’ll save you.”

Like Schwedel, Psaki can’t fathom that Usha Vance is capable of making her own decisions and choosing a path different from the one Democrats believe she should have taken. Liberals like Psaki insist that they have more respect for minorities than do conservatives even as they launch nasty personal attacks against them that diminish their agency and autonomy.

Especially revealing is the contrast with the treatment of prominent Democrat women.

For instance, while Democrats and members of the media now attack JD and Usha Vance over their interracial marriage, they endlessly fawned over former Vice President Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff, with article titles like “Kamala Harris’ marriage could challenge a racial taboo” from CNN and “For interracial couples, Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff are a ‘monumental symbol’” from the Washington Post.

The media establishment also treated former First Lady Michelle Obama as a goddess-like figure, shouting down any criticism of her White House initiatives as racist and sexist. After Barack Obama’s election, Michelle resigned her position as vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center, and hardly anyone took note.

Yet Usha’s decision to focus full-time on her role as Second Lady has been portrayed as proof that she abandoned her ambitions for her husband’s. One former summer-associate colleague even grotesquely asked on Substack whether Usha was happy and whether her marriage represented “a Stockholm syndrome situation.”

Supportive partnership is only empowering, it seems, when the spouse supports a Democrat.

But perhaps no one has borne of the brunt of Democrats’ double standard for women more than First Lady Melania Trump, who has been ruthlessly and repeatedly attacked over everything from her immigrant background to her accent and even her White House outdoor decor.

During a 2025 House hearing on immigration, Democrat Rep. Jasmine Crockett belittled Melania’s modeling career, sneering that she was not on the level of “Tyra Banks, Cindy Crawford or Naomi Campbell” and declaring that “the math ain’t mathin’” on her eligibility.

After Mrs. Trump renovated the White House Rose Garden in 2020, former New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald wrote that he was “furious” the First Lady was “a foreigner” and claimed she had no right to alter “our history.”

President Trump, meanwhile – whom Democrats have constantly labeled a sexist – has repeatedly placed women in demanding, high-profile positions of public trust. He named Karoline Leavitt his 2024 campaign press secretary while she was pregnant with her first child. Days after giving birth, she returned to work following the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. The President later made her the youngest White House press secretary in history. During her second pregnancy, she remained at the podium and became the first press secretary to have a baby while serving.

Leavitt recently stepped down to spend more time with her two young children, but says she will continue advising President Trump through MAGA Inc., more proof of his commitment to empowering women and moms.

Leavitt is hardly the only woman whom the President has trusted with real authority. Susie Wiles, who managed Trump’s 2024 campaign, now serves as the first female White House chief of staff. Brooke Rollins, Linda McMahon, and Kelly Loeffler also lead major federal agencies.

Liberals are free to dislike JD Vance’s policy positions. But reducing his wife’s career choices to an act of surrender and her children to campaign props yet again exposes a faux feminism that is precisely the opposite of female empowerment.

Attacks from El-Sayed and other liberals against conservative women instead reveal the left’s reflexive hostility toward any woman who chooses anything other than the path Democrats have laid out for her.