Second Lady Usha Vance, a self-confessed bookworm, took the spotlight Thursday to plug her White House–backed summer reading challenge, stepping into a role left vacant by the mostly absent Melania Trump.
Vance, wife of vice president and Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance, appeared on Fox & Friends to tout her plan aimed at tackling the alarming stat that 40 percent of Americans can’t read at a basic level.
The program encourages kids to read 12 books over the summer, with one lucky participant winning a trip to the White House.
But the segment was far from smooth. Bookish Yale graduate Vance stumbled through the softball interview, awkwardly smiling and stammering as Ainsley Earhardt lobbed easy questions her way.
At one point she suggested the initiative is a way to stop children “scrolling Instagram or Googling things you probably shouldn’t be Googling.”
Still, her campaign follows a long tradition of White House women leading literacy efforts: Michelle Obama famously read Green Eggs and Ham at the Library of Congress for Read Across America Day in 2011, Laura Bush launched “Ready to Read, Ready to Learn” during her tenure, and Barbara Bush’s family literacy foundation is still going strong.
Vance, and her kids, have a serious reading list. She said in October last year that her then-seven-year-old Ewan was “obsessed” with mythology and was reading “The Odyssey,” and “The Iliad” by the ancient Greek poet Homer.
Her own reading list, shown on Goodreads under her maiden name “Chilukuri,” includes the controversial book “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov and “White Teeth” by multiculturalism champion Zadie Smith.
Other titles include “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” by Patrick Süskind and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories” by Raymond Carver.
In March, she accidentally revealed she was reading—or had read—the very un-MAGA Earth in the Balance, authored by Bill Clinton’s VP, Al Gore.
First published in 1992, Gore’s book was an early warning about the “grave danger” presented by climate change. It came just before she and her husband jetted off to Greenland, the island Donald Trump wants to milk for all its natural resources.
While Melania did emerge briefly to read at this year’s White House Easter Egg Roll, she’s been notably absent from any sustained reading push.
Her Be Best campaign vaguely touched on literacy but focused more broadly on online safety and children’s welfare. Since President Donald Trump’s November win, the former model has been spotted only a handful of times, most recently at the Vatican for Pope Francis’ funeral, and at two low-key White House events.
Biographer Michael Wolff recently told The Daily Beast Podcast that Melania and Trump are “separated” in all but name, living “completely separate lives.”
The Beast’s CCO Joanna Coles joked that “Melania is missing.”
The New York Times echoed that claim, calling her low profile a “sensitive subject” within Trumpworld. As of early May, she had spent fewer than 14 days at the White House since Trump’s second inauguration—an absence not seen since Bess Truman nearly 80 years ago, historian Katherine Jellison noted.
That distance contradicts Melania’s own pledge in a rare Fox News interview back in January. Asked where she would spend most of her time, she replied confidently: “I will be in the White House.”
