Republican vice presidential candidate U.S. Senator JD Vance (R-OH) speaks at a campaign rally at Radford University in Radford, Virginia, July 22, 2024.
Alex Wong |
Senator JD Vance, former President Donald Trump's running mate, defended his comments on Friday, accusing leading Democrats – including Vice President Kamala Harris – of being pathetic “childless cat ladies” who wanted to “make the rest of the country pathetic too” and of being anti-family and anti-child.
Vance has been under fire for days after the “cat lady” remark resurfaced online after the Ohio Republican was nominated as her party's vice presidential candidate.
His decision on Friday to make more comments rather than apologize or say his views have changed means the Trump team faces further criticism.
“That was obviously a sarcastic comment. I have nothing against cats,” Vance said Friday on the Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM.
“I know the media wants to attack me and get me to back off, Megyn, but all I'm trying to say is that I think your perspective changes pretty fundamentally when you have kids, become a parent,” Vance said.
“The Democrats have become anti-family over the last five, 10 years, Megyn. It's part of their politics, it's part of the way they talk about parents and children. It's time we called that out,” said Vance, who has three children of her own.
“I don't think we should back away from that… I think we should be honest about the issue.” Vance's comments on Kelly's show were his first to address renewed controversy over comments he made in 2021 while running for Ohio's Senate seat.
“It's not a criticism of people who don't have children. I said that explicitly in my remarks,” Vance said. “It's not about criticizing people who, for various reasons, don't have children. It's about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.”
“I want to attack the left, particularly the childless left, because I think the rejection of the American family is perhaps the worst and most evil thing the left has done in this country,” Vance said during an appearance at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
Vance said at the time that although Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Senator Cory Booker (DN.J.) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.) come from different parts of the country and have different backgrounds, “one thing unites them all: none of them have children.”
While Vance stressed that he was not targeting people “who cannot have children for very complicated and important reasons,” he said, “It is a very different thing to build a political movement that is theoretically committed to the future of this country when not a single one of them is actually committed to the future of this country.”
Harris, who is the de facto Democratic nominee, is stepmother to her husband Douglas Emhoff's two children, whom they call “Momala.” When Vance made the remarks, Buttigieg was in the process of adopting twins with his partner.
A month after his 2021 comment, Vance appeared on Tucker Carlson's now-defunct show on Fox News – Kelly's former employer – and further addressed the issue.
“We are essentially run in this country, by the Democrats, by our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are unhappy with their own lives and the choices they have made and therefore want to make the rest of the country unhappy as well,” Vance said.
“It's just a basic fact that when you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” he said.
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Last week, much of the criticism of these comments came from Democrats and their allies, who sharply accused Vance of assuming that politicians' decisions to have children or not are a function of their political ideology.
However, some of Harris' supporters also used Vance's remarks to support the idea that they could serve as “cat ladies” to help elect the first female U.S. president after President Joe Biden dropped out of the election and endorsed Harris as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate.
Harris' campaign on Friday seized on a theme that emerged online among supporters who called Vance “weird.”
“JD Vance is a creep (who wants to ban abortion nationwide),” said an email from the Harris campaign team. “JD Vance is weird. Voters know it – Vance is the most unpopular vice presidential candidate in decades.”
Ohio Republican and Republican vice presidential candidate Senator JD Vance attends the third day of the Republican National Convention at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., on July 17, 2024. Thousands of Republicans have gathered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to show their support for former U.S. President Donald Trump as a crucial November election approaches. (Photo by Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Jacek Boczarski | Anadolu | Getty Images
Emhoff's ex-wife Kerstin Emhoff said Vance's comments were “unfounded” and pointed to Harris' role in their children's lives.
“For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been co-mom to Doug and me,” Kerstin Emhoff said in a statement to NBC News on Thursday. “She is loving, caring, fiercely protective and always there. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her as a part of it.”
Ella Emhoff, 25, posted a screenshot on her Instagram story supporting her mother's statement and added her own words: “How can you be 'childless' when you have such sweet kids like Cole and I?”
“I love my three parents,” wrote Ella.
The Wall Street Journal's editorial board – which usually supports Republicans – wrote on Wednesday that “the accusation that Ms. Harris is childless is another false note” from Republicans as they grapple with her White House bid.
“The decision to have children is a highly personal matter and often as much a matter of chance as of choice. The attack underscores the culture-censoring side of the Republican Party that turns off many voters,” the Journal's editorial board wrote in its editorial.
“She has two stepchildren. You can emphasize the virtue of family and children without sounding like a moralizer.”
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