Usha Vance stumbled Monday as she went down the steps of the vice presidential helicopter with her nine-week-old son in tow.
The second lady, with little Alec Neel Vance strapped to her chest in a baby carrier and a diaper bag flung over her shoulder, had one hand on the railing and another on the baby’s head when she appeared to miss a step near the bottom of the stairs.
Four service members on the tarmac of Joint Base Andrews looked on as Usha quickly reached for the second railing and somehow managed to regain her balance.
Moments later, Vice President JD Vance emerged from the helicopter carrying their 4-year-old daughter, Mirabel, and met a smiling Usha at the bottom of the stairs.
The Vances are heading to Alaska where the vice president will hit the stump for Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska).
“As you probably saw, Usha and a couple of the kids are joining,” he told reporters on the tarmac. “This is Usha’s 50th state, which is why we are bringing a nine-week-old baby on a seven-and-a-half-hour flight to Alaska.”
“So if I give a speech tonight and I looked haggard and stressed out, that’s exactly why.”
Alec, the couple’s fourth child, was born on July 19 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.
His birth marked the first time since 1870 that a child has been born to a sitting vice president.
In Alaska, the vice president will speak at a rally in Fairbanks late Monday night.
The trip is part of a red-state blitz that President Trump and Vance have embarked on in the run-up to the midterm elections.
Sullivan is locked in a tight re-election battle against former Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska).
Peltola leads Sullivan in the key Senate race by 1.8 percentage points, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls.
