J.D. Vance Says He Won’t Apologize to Childless Women over ‘Cat Ladies’ Comment But Has ‘Nothing Against Cats’

Vance told Megyn Kelly it was "obviously a sarcastic comment"

Sen. J.D. Vance, former President Donald Trump’s running mate, defended his 2021 comments accusing Democratic leaders - including Vice President Kamala Harris - of being “childless cat ladies” who “want to make the rest of the country miserable.”

Vance, 39, made the comments in a July 2021 interview with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson. It resurfaced on social media after Trump chose the Ohio Republican as his vice presidential running mate. On Friday, July 26, Vance told Megyn Kelly he stands by the comments he made while he was running to represent Ohio in the U.S. Senate.

“Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I’ve got nothing against cats,” Vance said on The Megyn Kelly Show on Sirius XM. “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.”

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Vance went on to claim that Democrats have “become anti-family” over the past five to 10 years. “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,” Vance told Kelly, 53.

“It’s not a criticism of people who don’t have children. I explicitly said in my remarks,” Vance continued. “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.”

"What I was basically saying is that 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 in the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too," Vance told Carlson in 2021, referencing a speech he made earlier in that year.

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"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," Vance continued. "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?"

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The comments drew widespread criticism, particularly as Harris is stepmother to her husband Doug Emhoff’s two children, son Cole, 29, and daughter Ella, 25. Jennifer Aniston criticized Vance's comments, as did Ella, who shared a supportive statement from her mother, Emhoff's ex-wife Kerstin.

"How can you be 'childless' when you have cutie pie kids like cole and I," Ella wrote on her Instagram Stories Thursday. "I love my three parents."

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