JD & Usha Vance's Shady Thoughts On Tech Billionaire Says It All About Their Opinion Of Elon

JD Vance may or may not have admitted out loud that he loathes Elon Musk, while his longtime wife, Usha Vance, may or may not have called the controversial tech billionaire "f***ing crazy." It's not immediately clear whether the former Ohio senator intended people to come to the conclusion that he was referring to Musk when JD delivered a riveting speech to the American Dynamism Summit in March 2025, but they definitely have. The "Hillbilly Elegy" author referenced a 2017 dinner that he and Usha attended with the crème de la crème of Silicon Valley, which likely included the SpaceX founder. JD was concerned by how unbothered the people in the room, and one CEO in particular, seemed by the prospect of artificial intelligence replacing the human workforce. 

According to the vice president, the man in question reasoned that he'd find everybody something else to do, like "digital fully immersive gaming." JD acknowledged, "You would know his name if I mentioned it, he was the CEO of a multibillion dollar company," per the Daily Mail. He added, "My wife texted me under the table and said, 'We have to get the hell out of here, these people are f***ing crazy.'" It's no secret that Musk enjoys gaming (even though he's apparently not very good at it), and the Tesla CEO has happily been firing people through DOGE. Moreover, at a May 2024 tech conference, he championed AI by infamously quipping, "Probably none of us will have a job" (via CNN), before adding that it might not be such a bad thing in the long run. 

Musk did note that AI might also cause a global existential crisis while clarifying, "I do think there's perhaps still a role for humans in this — in that we may give AI meaning." 

JD Vance has been pushed aside in favor of Elon Musk by Donald Trump on multiple occasions, and he's taken some subtle jabs at the tech billionaire over the years too, which leads us to believe that his American Dynamism Summit speech was indeed directed at Musk. Trump once accidentally admitted that he doesn't care about Vance, and certain media outlets have even referred to Vance and Musk as the "two vice presidents," (via Le Monde). The former Ohio senator's position in the Trump administration was constantly questioned after the election, with former RNC chairman Michael Steele saying what everyone was thinking while speaking to MSNBC in November 2024. 

"Where is JD Vance?" Steele asked. "My feeling is Elon Musk is the surrogate VP." He also pointed out that, while Musk was being included in important government business alongside phone calls with world leaders, Vance was stuck on the sidelines, tasked with finding the votes needed to confirm Trump's then pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz. Not exactly a fun task, given that Vance somehow had to convince people that all the scandalous things that had come out about Gaetz weren't all that bad (they were). 

Vance was also notably left out of a call that Trump and Musk made to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Taking all of this into account, you could be forgiven for instantly trusting a questionable audio clip of Vance raging against Musk that was posted to X, formerly Twitter. "He's making us look bad, he's making me look bad," a voice that sounds a lot like the VP's complained. Vance decried the recording as "a fake AI-generated clip" on X. However, maybe the debunked clip articulates the thoughts keeping him up at night.