It’s a real challenge to keep up with Sen. J.D. Vance’s long rhetoric condemning childless Americans. NBC News added to the bizarre list last week, but remarkably, the list keeps growing.
Over Labor Day weekend, for example, Media Matters revealed a 2021 podcast interview in which the future Republican vice presidential nominee called people “who can’t have children” because they’re “past the biological window of possibility” as “miserable” people who seek “racial or gender equality” to “give their lives meaning.”
This week, Media Matters restocked the list with a 2021 Newsmax segment in which Vance argued that the United States had become a “dangerous place to live” because of childless elites.
But as my MSNBC colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim explained, “new reporting about Vance’s approval of a 2017 Heritage Foundation document could lead to more backlash.”
The document in question is the “Index of Culture and Opportunity,” which was compiled by the Heritage Foundation to analyze cultural and economic trends from a conservative perspective. Vance … wrote an introduction to the report, praising it for “shedding[ding] “Light was needed on our country’s most difficult and persistent problems.” And as The New York Times noted, he was also the keynote speaker at the report’s release.
The same New York Times report added that the Heritage Foundation document “proposed a far-reaching conservative agenda to curtail sexual and reproductive freedoms and reshape American families.”
In a series of 29 separate essays, conservative commentators, policy experts, community leaders and Christian clergy railed against the spread of in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments, describing them as harmful to women. They praised the proliferation of state laws restricting abortion rights and access, saying the procedure should become “unthinkable” in America. And they cited hunger as a “great motivator” for Americans to find work.
The fact that Vance volunteered to promote the “Culture and Opportunity Index” adds a new chapter to the story of the Ohio Republican’s somewhat radical view of the world.
It also raises a related question that’s too often overlooked: Did Trump’s team actually vet the former president’s new running mate?
In theory, the Trump campaign’s investigative team was responsible for combing the backgrounds of potential vice presidential candidates, looking for potential problem areas. In practice, that leads to a few possibilities.
The first is that Team Trump didn’t put much time or effort into investigating Vance’s far-right views on American families. The second is that Team Trump did a thorough vetting process, learned about Vance’s record — and decided not to care.
So, what is it?
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
