JD Vance is not backing down from his previous criticism of prominent elected Democrats as “childless cat ladies.”
In an interview on SiriusXM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show,” Kelly spoke at length to Vance about the disparaging comments he made in 2021 about people who choose not to have children. At one point, she asked him to respond to the outrage over his use of the term “cat ladies.”
“It was clearly a sarcastic comment. I have nothing against cats. I have nothing against dogs, and I have one dog at home, and I love him,” Vance said.
“People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the content of what I said. And the content of what I said, Megyn, I’m sorry, it’s true,” Vance said.
In his interview with Kelly on Friday, Vance acknowledged that Harris has stepchildren and that Buttigieg has adopted children.
“I wish her stepchildren, Kamala Harris and her entire family the very best,” Vance said. “The point is not that she is less than. The point is that her party has pursued a series of policies that are profoundly anti-child.”
But Vance did not retract his 2021 statements that people without children have less of a stake in the future of the country. He did not retract his claim that people who choose not to have children are unhappy.
The Republican senator and vice presidential candidate from Ohio went on to explain that Democrats are “anti-family,” in part because of liberal commentary about the downsides of having children. (For example, some young people say they don’t want kids because of climate change.)
Vance also repeatedly pointed to two anti-family policy positions he said Democrats have taken: “Why do they want to mask toddlers for years into the pandemic? Why do they say we should eliminate the child tax credit, which lowers taxes for working families with children?”
The child tax credit reduces household tax bills by as much as $2,000 per child, a policy with bipartisan support; Democrats temporarily expanded the tax credit to as much as $3,600 per child in 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan. They sought to make the expansion permanent but failed to do so, largely due to unanimous opposition from Republicans, including Vance.
Vance also falsely claimed to Kelly that Democrats do not support the CTC, as it is known. An ABC News story published Friday called attention to a comment Vance once made arguing that parents should pay lower taxes than non-parents. In that story, a Vance spokesperson pointed out that the CTC already gives parents a lower tax rate, which he acknowledged Democrats support.
As for the idea of requiring children to wear masks, Vance appeared to reference Democrats’ previous support for mask-wearing in places like schools and daycares.
The campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, highlighted Vance’s interview with Kelly on Friday, calling him a “creep” and “weird” in an email about his support for an abortion ban.
