Washington: Former US President Donald Trump's running mate JD Vance has defended his remarks on referring to key Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, as "childless cats" as an old video from 2021 resurfaced online. His "cat ladies" remark caused significant backlash online, including from Hollywood actress Jennifer Aniston, after he was announced as the party's vice presidential candidate.
"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 on this... 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. It's not a criticism of people who don't have children."
He further accused the Democrats of becoming "anti-family" and "we should be honest about the problem". "This is not about criticising people who for various reasons don’t have kids. This is about criticising the Democratic party for becoming anti-family and anti-child," he added, in his first remarks since the controversy emerged over his remarks made in 2021 when he ran for the Senate seat in Ohio.
What did JD Vance say about Democrats?
During a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, Vance said Harris was one of the "childless cat ladies" who "want to make the rest of the country miserable too", NBC reported. "If you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children," he said.
Although Vance asserted that he was not targeting people who are unable to have kids for complicated or important reasons, he said it is "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".
"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. These remarks have been used by some of Harris' supporters to embrace the idea of cat ladies to elect the first woman President of the US.
Vance's remarks met with widespread backlash
Kamala Harris, who is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is a stepmother to her husband Doug Emhoff's two children, Ella and Cole, who refer to her as "Momala". Doug Emhoff's ex-wife Kerstin called Vance's remarks "baseless", saying Harris had been a co-parent for over 10 years and is "loving, nurturing, fiercely protective and always present".
Ella Emhoff, 25, posted a screenshot on her Instagram story in support of her mother’s statement, adding, “How can you be ‘childless’ when you have cutie pie kids like Cole and I?” At the bottom of the screenshot, she wrote, "I love my three parents."
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who now has two children, also criticised Vance’s comments, saying, "The really sad thing is, he said that after Chasten and I had been through a fairly heartbreaking setback in our adoption journey. He couldn’t have known that, but maybe that’s why you shouldn’t be talking about other people’s children."
“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.” Actress Jennifer Aniston on Instagram wrote, "I truly cannot believe this is coming from a potential VP. All I can say is … Mr Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day."
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