JD Vance praised wife Usha’s response to liberals who questioned her $8.75 maternity dress, suggesting the Second Lady should run the federal government’s budget.   

Mrs Vance, who is expecting her fourth child, took aim at The New York Times after its fashion critic used a Father’s Day video of the couple to examine ‘the wider political messaging around prominent pregnant women in the Trump administration’.

The Second Lady accompanied the post with a screenshot showing the asymmetrical, body-hugging dress had originally been priced at $49.99 before being marked down to $12.49, with a further $3.74 taken off through promotional discounts. 

Her husband, the Vice President, was greatly impressed, joking: ‘She bought a $50 dress for $8.75. America: meet your next director of the federal budget!’

The Vice President also retweeted his wife’s scathing critique of the liberal newspaper.

‘Now that we know the political significance of my $8.75 coral maternity dress from Old Navy, can’t wait to hear what The New York Times has to say about my elastic-waistband pants and compression socks!’ Vance wrote on X.

The piece, written by Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman, was titled The Politics and Power of the Pregnancy Image and examined the public pregnancies of Vance, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Katie Miller, wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

Friedman’s column began with the Instagram Reel shared by the Vances for Father’s Day.

In the clip, Mrs Vance tells her husband their growing family means he will have many more years of reading to children.

‘Luckily, there’s going to be a new baby for you to read to,’ she says in the video. ‘So you’re going to have many more years ahead of you.’

JD Vance replies: ‘I was not yet ready to be out of the baby phase, so here we are, about to jump right in, in just a few short weeks.’

Friedman noted Mrs Vance was wearing a ‘stretchy coral dress’ that emphasized her pregnancy and said the video offered a particularly direct public introduction to the couple’s coming arrival.

She also pointed to Leavitt’s recent birth of her second child and Miller’s birth of her fourth child, describing the three pregnancies as coincidental but significant in the context of the administration’s wider image-making.

‘That three such prominent women in the MAGA movement were pregnant at pretty much the same time was, indubitably, a coincidence,’ Friedman wrote.

But she argued the pregnancies had nevertheless created a ‘consistent’ public picture of the White House’s family and fertility agenda.

‘If the bare-chested, muscled mixed martial arts fighters of the UFC match that President Trump hosted on Flag Day were the poster guys for MAGA’s image of masculinity,’ Friedman wrote, ‘then the pregnant women of Trump world are one half of their feminine counterparts.’

The columnist said Mrs Vance’s pregnancy also helped present a more personal side of the Vice President.

‘As second lady, her job is also to represent and humanize the Vice President,’ Friedman wrote. ‘By spotlighting her pregnancy, she is doing exactly that.’

Vance has been promoting his religious journey in a new book that could ultimately serve as a sort of origin story for a future presidential campaign.

‘Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith’ comes out Tuesday from Harper, and The Associated Press obtained a copy ahead of its release. 

The HarperCollins imprint also put out ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ the bestselling memoir from 2016 that helped make Vance a national figure.

Vance has been working on and off on his new book since then, a tumultuous decade that included a Hollywood movie about his youth, a short stint as a US senator for Ohio and now Vice President to Donald Trump.