Since becoming the Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance’s (R-OH) 2021 remarks describing key Democrats — including Vice President Kamala Harris — of being miserable, “childless cat ladies” who want to “make the rest of the country miserable too,” have resurfaced. Vance has been trying to shrug off the outrage over his remarks by claiming that Democrats have taken him out of context.
Despite reports that some Republican lawmakers are regretting putting the Ohio senator on the ticket, Trump also tried to come to Vance’s defense on Monday.
“He’s got tremendous support,” Trump said during a Monday Fox News interview. “And he really does among a certain group of people: People who like families. He made a statement having to do with families. That doesn’t mean that people that are a member of a big and beautiful family with four hundred children around and everything else … .” Trump trailed off.
Later in the interview, the former president seemed to suggest that he is ok with those who don’t have families, regardless of what his vice presidential pick might think. “Sometimes it doesn’t work out,” he told host Laura Ingraham. “You don’t meet the right person or you don’t meet any person, but you’re just as good, in many cases a lot better than a person … in a family situation. But they took it and they spun it differently.”
Despite the clean up Vance and the former president are attempting, Vance has a history of making extremist remarks about women and families.
Here are some of his attacks:
Vance REALLY seems to hate women without children.
The “childless cat lady” trope isn’t the only thing Vance relies on to make this attack.
While running for his current Senate seat in 2021, the former venture capitalist really leaned into a similar talking point: People without kids don’t have a direct stake in the future of this country, and are less entitled to make important decisions.
“I needed to speak DIRECTLY to patriots like you about the serious issue of radical childless leaders in this country,” reads a 2021 Vance fundraising email. “We can’t have people who don’t have a direct stake in this country making our most important decisions.
“We’ve allowed ourselves to be dominated by childless sociopaths – they’re invested in NOTHING because they’re not invested in this country’s children. Fighting back won’t be easy – our childless opponents have a lot of free time. That’s why I need YOU to stand with me,” he continues.
Vance wants parents with more kids to get more votes.
And in a September 2021 speech he gave during an event hosted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Vance said Americans with children ”should have more of an ability to speak [their] voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids.”
“The Democrats are talking about giving the vote to 16-year-olds,” Vance said. “Let’s do this instead. Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of the children.” He continued, asking, “Doesn’t this mean that nonparents don’t have as much of a voice as parents? Doesn’t this mean that parents get a bigger say in how democracy functions?”
He then answered his own question with a simple “yes.”
Vance suggested women should stay in violent marriages for the sake of their kids.
We already established Vance wants women to have babies if they want full participation in this democracy. But he also has denounced divorce, and even suggested women should stay in unhappy marriages — even ones where they might be facing abuse.
Kids in his generation, Vance said at one 2021 event, “personally suffered from the fact that a lot of moms and dads saw marriage as a contract, like any other business deal. Once it becomes no longer good for one of the parties or both of the parties, you just dissolve it and go onto a new business relationship.”
“This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace,” he said later, “which is the idea that like, well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term.”.
“Maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, though I’m skeptical. But it really didn’t work out for the kids in those marriages.”
(Vance chastising women for going through divorces like they are “changing underwear” is ironic considering he is now the running mate to a twice-divorced candidate.)
Vance sees some government proposals to expand child care as “class war.”
Vance has at times claimed to support policies to support kids that Democrats also get behind: an expanded child tax credit, and cash assistance to families.
But there’s one proposal he has extremely strong opinions about: universal child care, an idea put forward by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and supported by other Democrats.
In early 2021, he let his true colors show.
“‘Universal day care’ is class war against normal people,” Vance posted on social media in April 2021.
Ok, the cat thing and everything else is just plain weird.
My apologies to any cats, especially ones shown in photos at this site, I am not referring to them.
I have never known anyone who treated marriage as a business relationship. Every dissolution I have witnessed has been a difficult process. That Vance thinks that changing marriages is just like changing underwear has never really seen a dissolution (even a no fault dissolution) up close and personal.
Vance is a freak with fascist tendencies. As long as we’re going to entertain diluting voting power, let’s scale his back ten percent for every anti-democratic screed. That’ll about eliminate his vote from a 10-minute internet search.
Then again, since I still find the idea appalling, let’s just stick to keeping him from ever holding office again, in any capacity. I wouldn’t trust him to water my plants, much less protect our nation or promote its values.
Pretty sure this guy sees marriage as a business relationship…
Does anyone know whether conservative Republicans actually do have more kids than liberal Democrats? My guess is no statistical difference. Surely there’s a study somewhere.
But Republicans as the party that cares about the future - gimme a break! They are currently all in to pump as much CO2 into the atmosphere as is humanly possible. They are actively trying to subvert even the smallest efforts to mitigate climate change, like energy efficient appliances. They sure care about their children’s future, don’t they?