Sen. JD Vance, the running mate of former President Donald Trump, on Friday defended his comments accusing key Democrats — including Vice President Kamala Harris — of being miserable "childless cat ladies" who want to "make the rest of the country miserable too," as well as anti-family and anti-kids.
Vance has been under fire for days after the "cat ladies" remark resurfaced online following the Ohio Republican's nomination as the party's vice presidential candidate.
His decision on Friday to double down on the comments, rather than to apologize or to say his views have changed, means the Trump campaign can expect the critiques to keep coming.
"Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I've got nothing against cats," Vance said Friday on The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM.
"I know the media wants to attack me and wants me to back down, Megyn, but the simple point that I made is that having children — becoming a father, becoming a mother — I really do think it changes your perspective in a pretty profound way," Vance said.
"The Democrats in the past five, 10 years Megyn, they have become anti-family, it's built into their policies, it's built into the way they talk about parents and children, and it's time that we called that out," said Vance, who has three children.
"I don't think we should back down from that ... I think we should be honest about the problem."Vance's comments on Kelly's show were the first by him to address the renewed controversy over remarks he made in 2021, when he was running for the Senate seat in Ohio.
"It's not a criticism of people who don't have children. I explicitly said in my remarks," Vance said. "This is not about criticizing people who for various reasons don't have kids. This is about criticizing the Democratic party for becoming anti-family and anti-child."
"I want to take aim at the left, specifically the childless left, because I think the rejection of the American family is perhaps the most pernicious and most evil thing that the left has done in this country," Vance said during an appearance at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
Vance at that time said that while Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., came from different parts the country and had different backgrounds, "the one thing that unites every single one of them: not a single one of them has any children."
While saying he was not targeting people "who are unable to have kids for very complicated and important reasons," Vance said, "It's something else to build a political movement, invested theoretically in the future of this country, when not a single one of them has any physical commitment to the future of this country."
Harris, who is the Democratic Party's de facto nominee, is a stepmother to her husband Douglas Emhoff's two children, who refer to her as "Momala." At the time Vance made his remarks Buttigieg was in the process of adopting twin babies with his partner.
A month after his comment in 2021, Vance appeared on Tucker Carlson's now defunct-show on Fox News — Kelly's former employer — and expanded on it.
"We're effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too," Vance said.
"It's just a basic fact that if you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children," he said.
In the past week, much of the criticism of those remarks has come from Democrats and their allies, who have excoriated Vance for presuming that decisions by people in politics to have children or not are a function of their political ideology.
But Vance's remarks have also been used by some of Harris' supporters to embrace the idea of being "cat ladies" who could help elect the first female U.S. president after President Joe Biden dropped out of the election and endorsed Harris to be the Democratic party's presidential nominee.
Harris' campaign on Friday seized on a theme that has emerged online from supporters, who have taken to calling Vance "weird."
"JD Vance Is a Creep (Who Wants to Ban Abortion Nationwide)," an email from the Harris campaign said. "JD Vance is weird. Voters know it – Vance is the most unpopular VP pick in decades."
Emhoff's ex-wife, Kerstin Emhoff, said that Vance's comments were "baseless," and sh referred to Harris' role in the lives of their children.
"For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I," Kerstin Emhoff said in a statement to NBC News on Thursday. "She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it."
The 25-year-old Ella Emhoff 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 cutie pie kids like Cole and I?"
"I love my three parents," Ella wrote.
The Wall Street Journal's editorial board — which routinely supports Republicans — on Wednesday wrote that "calling out Ms. Harris for being childless is another false note" struck by the Republicans as they confront her candidacy for the White House.
"The decision to have children is intensely personal and often a matter of chance as much as choice, and the attack underscores the culturally censorious side of the GOP that alienates many voters," the Journal board wrote in its editorial.
"She has two stepchildren. It's possible to stress the virtue of families, and children, without sounding like moral scolds."
