Topline
Republican vice presidential candidate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, has an extensive history of criticizing Americans without children—despite dismissing his previous statement comparing Vice President Kamala Harris and other prominent Democrats without biological children to “childless cat ladies” as an off-handed joke, according to a new CNN report.
Republican vice presidential nominee U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) speaks with media gathered outside … [+]
Key Facts
Vance drew widespread backlash over his comments about childless Americans in a series of interviews unearthed last week—including a 2021 spot with Tucker Carlson in which he specifically mentions Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., likening them to “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable in their own lives” and “want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”
Though he defended the comments as “obviously sarcastic” in an interview on “The Megyn Kelly Show” last week, Vance has made a multitude of similar statements in the past, including in fundraising emails for his 2022 Senate campaign, CNN reported.
In one of his earliest known statements on the topic in a 2019 speech, Vance said he’s seen positive changes in people after having children, adding “we should care about declining fertility, not just because it’s bad for our economy, but because . . . we think babies are good because we’re not sociopaths,” he told an audience at a gala for The American Conservative magazine, according to a YouTube clip cited by CNN.
Vance lamented “the fact that so many people, especially in America’s leadership class,” don’t have children in an appearance on a conservative podcast in November 2020, claiming that “almost always the people who are most deranged and most psychotic” on Twitter “are people who don’t have kids at home.”
In August 2021, Vance’s Senate campaign sent a fundraising email that mentioned “radical childless leaders in this country,” and a subsequent fundraising email that said “our country is basically run by childless Democrats who are miserable in their own lives and want to make the rest of the country miserable too,” CNN found.
A month later, he tweeted “the cat ladies, man. They must be stopped,” linking to a poll that found climate change concerns were driving some people not to have children.
Contra
Trump defended Vance in a Monday appearance on Fox News, telling host Laura Ingraham “The Democrats are good at spinning things differently from what they are. All he said is—for him, he likes family.”
Key Background
Vance’s eyebrow-raising comments about childless Americans are among remarks that have led Democrats, including Harris and her surrogates, to adopt the narrative that Vance, Trump and Republicans, generally, are “weird.” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Ct., and Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, posted a video Friday to Twitter in which Schatz said it was “quite weird” and Murphy said it was “super weird” that Vance once suggested in a 2021 speech that people with children should have more voting power. Harris’ campaign also sent a press release Friday declaring “JD Vance is weird,” citing his lagging poll numbers and his suggestion in a 2022 podcast interview that there should be a “federal response” to stop women in states with abortion bans from traveling elsewhere to seek the procedures. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who is in the running to be Harris’ pick for vice president, joked that Vance is “weird” for drinking Diet Mountain Dew in a CNN interview—a response to Vance’s poorly received quip during a campaign stop in his Ohio hometown last week that Democrats would say it’s “racist” that he drinks the soda beverage. Buttigieg, in a Monday appearance on “The Daily Show” said Democrats were even more “disturbed” about the prospects of a second Trump presidency now that Vance has been named his running mate “because of how odd [Vance has]
turned out to be.”
Tangent
Harris is step-mother to the two children her husband, Doug Emhoff, shares with his ex-wife, Kerstin Emhoff. Kerstin responded to Vance’s “cat lady” comments by defending Harris, telling NBC News Harris has “been a co-parent” who “is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present.” Buttigieg, who adopted twins with his husband, Chasten, in September 2021, told CNN they went “through a fairly heartbreaking setback in our adoption journey” in response to Vance’s comments, adding “he couldn’t have known that, but maybe that’s why you shouldn’t be talking about other people’s children.”
Further Reading
JD Vance Calls ‘Cat Lady’ Comment ‘Sarcastic’—But Doubles Down On His Criticism (Forbes)
JD Vance Vs. ‘Cat Ladies’ And The Childless: VP Candidate’s Views Explained (Forbes)
JD Vance: Everything You Need To Know About Trump’s Running Mate (Forbes)
2022 midterms, 2024 presidential campaign, the January 6 House committee investigation, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s historic ouster, the 2023 State of the Union Address, former President Donald Trump’s federal election interference and classified documents cases and his Manhattan hush money case. Dorn graduated in 2012 from the University of Dayton with a degree in journalism. Prior to joining Forbes, she covered New York City and state politics for the New York Post and City and State magazine. Follow her for updates and analysis on the 2024 presidential race, key Senate and House races and developments in Congress and at the White House.
“>
