Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, the Republican nominee for vice president, brushed aside the criticism of his "childless cat ladies" comment from three years, saying it was "sarcasm" and that the larger point then — and now — is that Democrats are becoming the "anti-family" and "anti-child" party.
Vance made the remarks Friday on SiriusXM's "The Megyn Kelly Show" amid the recharged furor over his comment from July 2021, when he was running for U.S. Senate.
Vance told Kelly he's "actually glad" the comment resurfaced because it gives him a chance to talk about "how our society became so profoundly anti-family."
Critics have predictably focused on the "sarcasm" rather than the "substance" of comments he gave during a TV interview, he said.
Vance said then that the country was being run "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 his point in 2021 is the same as now.
"It's not a criticism of people who don't have children. ... This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.
"We have to ask ourselves: Why do we have masking of toddlers years after the pandemic ended? Why do we have the Harris campaign coming out this very morning and saying that we should not have the child tax credit, which lowers tax rates for parents of young children? It's because they have become anti-family and anti-kid," he said.
"Democrats in the past five, 10 years 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.
"I don't think we should back down from it ... I think we should be honest about the problem, Vance said.
Vance also said the media has been "dishonest" about his stance on in vitro fertilization. While Vance did not support the Democrat-sponsored "Right to IVF Act" last month over his concerns about religious liberties, he cosigned a Republican-led bill titled the "IVF Protection Act."
"One of the things that has been profoundly dishonest about the media ... [is] they've taken this incredibly out of context. They say that I'm opposed to IVF or that I'm criticizing people who have fertility problems," he said.
"I said explicitly in my remarks that I wasn't talking about people who couldn't have children. I was talking about people who have turned anti-child into the ethic of their entire party. That's a fundamentally different thing."
He later added: "I think the problem with the Democrats' approach on [IVF] is they're trying to take away religious liberty. I think we have to protect the rights of Christian hospitals to operate the way that they want to operate, but ... that's totally consistent with promoting fertility treatments for parents who need it."
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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