According to his wife, Republican vice president candidate JDVance has a secret love for Magic: The Gathering.

There are many reasons why companies don't want politicians to be associated with their brands. Politicians are controversial by nature, and a politician on the right or left could alienate your customers on the left or right. It's best to limit your corporate politics to unpublicised, lavish donations and to remain blandly apolitical when it comes to your public-facing material.

Another reason is that politicians are generally awkward and off-putting. If they associate themselves with your brand, then the public may start to think your thing too is awkward and unattractive. Quelle horreur.

Wizards of the Coast must be less than pleased by the news that Donald Trump's running-mate, Republican Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance, a real combination of right-wing politics, a stiff stage-presence, and avowedly conservative politics, is apparently an avid Magic: the Gathering fan. According to his wife Usha (via Indy100), that's what he said. Do you think he prefers the Hatsune Miku Set?

Ainsley Earhardt, the Fox and Friends host, asked Usha Vance about her husband's geekier hobbies. Earhardt said that the question caused her to hesitate before answering "He's gonna kill me for this. It's Magic: the Gathering. It's a card game... it's similar with Pokemon, which is so popular right now." And his boys are into Pokemon."

Can America afford to have a Second Lady that doesn't understand the many obvious and important differences in Pokemon and Magic? That's up to the voters. But the wife of the potential vice president wasn't just making up things. Indy100 notes that JDVance's Hillbilly Elegy describes his secret love of the game. Vance wrote, "I couldn't tell my father that I played a nerdy card game called Magic because I feared he would think the cards were satanic." Vance's youth group kids "often" spoke of Magic, and its negative influence on young Christians.

Vance, who is a 40-year old millennial, grew up alongside Magic, which was released in 1993. WotC started removing pentagrams from cards like Unholy strength and Demonic Tutor in 1995. Why? The company was largely motivated by the fact that it had seen the Satanic Panic in the '80s when parents believed that games like D&D recruited their children into Satanic cults.

WotC was trying to avoid the controversy caused by D&D devils and demonic monsters. It began removing the pentagrams, and "demons", for example, became "horrors."

Vance's dad doesn't appear to be reassured by this. It's possible that the effects of this upbringing still linger and that's why his wife is the one who tells us about Vance's love for Magic, rather than Vance himself. Honestly? That's a little sad. It's better to live in a society where people are free to be themselves without fear of being judged than to have to conform to societal expectations that they don’t really fit.

It must be something in water, as this is the second appearance of the Republican presidential pair in our pages within a span of just a few days. Yesterday, we described - with some exhaustion - Donald Trump's appearance in a 1.5 hour stream hosted by banned Twitch streaminger Adin Ross. The stream culminated in the two sitting in a customised Cybertruck and listening to Elvis love songs. It's worse than it sounds.