After taking flak all week for calling Democrats “childless cat ladies” three years ago, J.D. Vance doubled down on those comments Friday in an interview with Megyn Kelly Show.
“Obviously it was a sarcastic comment,” he said on on Kelly’s SiriusXM show. “I’ve got nothing against cats… People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said. And the substance of what I said, Megan, I’m sorry, it’s true. It is true that we’ve become anti-family. It is true that the left has become anti-child.” (This is not true, at all.)
Vance insisted earlier in the interview that he was not trying to be critical of people who don’t have children: “It’s not a criticism of people who don’t have children. I explicitly said in my remarks, despite the fact that the media has lied about this, that this is not about criticizing people who for various reasons didn’t have kids, this is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.”
Well, let’s roll the tape. Here’s what he said to Tucker Carlson in 2021:
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. And it’s just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?
He sure seemed to be disparaging people for being childless!
Vance’s attempted course-correction this week also doesn’t jibe with some of the Ohio senator’s weird policy ideas. For instance, he has said wants childless people to pay more in taxes and have their votes count for less. So it seems that the initial criticism he received from celebrities as well as lawmakers was warranted.
Vance has been going viral all week—in a bad way. He was found to have defended the infamous QAnon shaman from the January 6 riots, a campaign rally speech in his hometown fell flat, and he lost support from some of Trump’s allies. Even a false rumor about a sexual act with a sofa picked up steam, forcing news organizations like the AP to conduct fact checks.
The new Republican vice presidential nominee may hope that his Kelly interview will help tamp down the criticism he’s receiving, but it’s only a matter of time before something else embarrassing surfaces. The likes of Anthony Scaramucci are already saying Vance’s days are numbered, and he may end up being the worst vice presidential candidate in history.
