'Bindi'-wearing woman challenges JD Vance on religious, immigration in viral exchange

A South Asian woman confronted US Vice President J D Vance over his faith and inter-religion marriage to Second Lady Usha Vance, as well as over the Trump administration's policies on immigration.

In an exchange that has gone viral, the young woman, adorning a 'bindi', questions Vance at a Turning Point USA event on Wednesday at the University of Mississippi.

“I did not agree with many of the things that you said right ahead of this, but I don't think that's my point to discuss here,” the young woman said as she addressed Vance.

She then went on to say that Vance is married to Usha Vance, who is not Christian and who grew up in a Hindu household.

“You are raising three kids in an intercultural, racial, religious household. How are you maintaining or how are you teaching your kids not to keep your religion ahead of their mother's religion…How are you balancing that?” Responding to the “personal” question about his interfaith household, Vance said, “Yes, my wife did not grow up Christian. I think it's fair to say that she grew up in a Hindu family, but not a particularly religious family in either direction." The US Vice President said when he met his wife, both of them were "agnostic or atheist".

“The way that we've come to our arrangement is she's my best friend. We talk to each other about this stuff. So we've decided to raise our kids Christian,” he said.

Vance said that on most Sundays, Usha goes to church with him.

"... I've told her, and I've said publicly, and I'll say now in front of 10,000 of my closest friends, do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by church? Yeah, I honestly do wish that, because I believe in the Christian gospel, and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way," he said.

"But if she doesn't, then God says everybody has free will, and so that doesn't cause a problem for me. That's something you work out with your friends, with your family, with the person that you love.” The woman also questioned the administration's immigration policies, amid the intense crackdown on immigrants in the second term of the Trump presidency.

“And when you talk about too many immigrants here, when did you guys decide that number? Why did you sell us a dream? You made us spend our youth, our wealth in this country, and gave us a dream.

"You don't owe us anything. We have worked hard for it, then how can you, as a Vice President, stand there and say that we have too many of them now, and we are going to take them out, to people who are here rightfully so, by paying the money that you guys ask us? You gave us the path, and now how can you stop it and tell us we don't belong here anymore?” Vance said that the US should lower its levels of immigration in the future while also respecting that there are people who have come to the country through lawful immigration pathways and have contributed to it.

“But just because one person or 10 people or 100 people came in legally and contributed to the United States of America, does that mean that we're thereby committed to let in a million or 10 million or 100 million people a year in the future?

Calling it "not right", he said that the US cannot have an immigration policy where what was "good for the country 50 or 60 years ago binds the country inevitably for the future".

He said that too many people want to come to the US, and his job is to look out for the people of the US, and not the interests of the "whole world".