Barack Obama criticized Vice President JD Vance for promoting what he called a “blood and soil” version of American identity that emphasizes ancestry and duration of family residence in the country, pointing to what he characterized as a fundamental hypocrisy in Vance’s nativist immigration stance.
Speaking with Malcolm Gladwell on a podcast about Reconstruction’s impact on America, Obama said: “One of our major parties is captured by a politics that is not that subtle about suggesting that ‘we the people’ means a certain kind of people. When you have the current Vice President making a speech that is basically a blood and soil version of ‘we the people.’ That it matters who your parents were and how long they’ve been here.”
Obama then highlighted what he saw as the central contradiction in Vance’s position: Vance is married to Usha Vance, who is the daughter of two immigrants from India. Usha Vance was born in the United States, automatically granting her citizenship. The former president noted that Vance’s rhetoric on immigration ignores his own wife’s family background, according to reporting from The Daily Beast.
Vance’s nativist statements appear to reference a 2025 speech he delivered to the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank, in which he argued that America has a “particular set of beliefs and way of life” and that people with ancestors who fought in the Civil War have “a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong.”
The Trump administration, in which Vance serves as Vice President, has sought to end birthright citizenship—the Constitutional right granting citizenship to anyone born in the country regardless of their parents’ legal status. Vance has been critical of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to maintain birthright citizenship protections.
Despite his frustrations with the current administration’s approach to immigration and national identity, Obama offered an ultimately optimistic message about America’s trajectory. He told Gladwell that the progress made over recent decades in creating a multiracial democracy “sticks” and is real, saying: “I would argue that the progress that we’ve seen over your lifetime and mine in creating a multiracial democracy, that stuff sticks. And that’s progress.” He added that while caste thinking and discrimination can flare up, there is evidence of “a better version of America” that has been demonstrated throughout the nation’s history.
Obama’s rare direct criticism of Vance comes as debates over immigration policy and what it means to be American have intensified under the second Trump administration, with competing visions of national identity at the center of the political divide.
Sources
- The Independent — Obama’s podcast conversation with Malcolm Gladwell criticizing Vance’s immigration rhetoric and pointing to hypocrisy regarding his wife’s immigrant background
- The Daily Beast — Reporting on Obama’s remarks about Vance’s nativist stance and the Claremont Institute speech
