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In the latest audio recording to resurface, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance can once again be heard going after women without children as somehow being harmful to other people’s kids.
“So many of the leaders of the left, and I hate to be so personal about this, but they’re people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children,” Vance said at a 2021 Center for Christian Virtue forum, in audio unearthed by nonprofit Chicagoland radio station WCPT820.
Vance, Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate, went on to slam American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten, insisting: “[S]he doesn’t have a single child. If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone."
The freshman senator, Yale-educated lawyer and former venture capitalist, first lobbed a widely derided slur about women who had never given birth during a 2021 interview with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson. He lamented that the US was under the control 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 further took aim at Vice President and Democratic presidential contender Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretray Pete Buttigieg, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a cabal “without children,” who shouldn’t be making decisions for others.
“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?” Vance asked Carlson.
Vance didn’t limit the “cat ladies” insult to women, either. Also in 2021, Vance took aim at economist Paul Krugman, tweeting: “Paul Krugman is one of many weird cat ladies who have too much power in our country. We should change this.”
Vance has also argued that those without children should pay higher taxes and have diminished voting rights. His offensive remarks have been met with outrage along with people sharing their personal stories.
Former Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head in a 2011 assassination attempt, posted on X that she and astronaut husband Senator Mark Kelly, a VP shortlister before Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, had tried and failed to conceive via IVF.
“To suggest we are somehow lesser is disgraceful,” Giffords posted.
Actress Jennifer Aniston also slammed Vance for his insensitivity to women struggling to conceive, posting to social media that she hoped Vance’s own daughter is “fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day.”
“I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option,” Aniston said. “Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”
Vance responded and called Aniston’s take “disgusting.”
At the Democratic National Convention earlier this month, Oprah Winfrey made a dig at Vance by saying that if a house was on fire that happened to belong to a “childless cat lady,” she’d still try to save her and her pet.
On Sunday, Vance tried to walk back his comments, saying during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press: “I made a sarcastic comment years ago that I think that a lot of Democrats have willfully misinterpreted.”
He said he had “a lot of regrets,” but that “a joke three years ago is not at the top 10 of the list.”
In an email received after this article was published, Taylor Van Kirk, a spokeswoman for Vance, doubled down on the VP hopeful’s attack line, telling The Independent that Vance’s ire was directed at “elites like Randi Weingarten, with the support of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” and not intended to tar the country’s “great teachers.”
Van Kirk’s statement suggested, without evidence, that schools are forgoing classes in reading, writing, math, and “the basics,” in favor of “forcing anti-American propaganda into the curriculum,” before concluding, “Senator Vance is committed to ending the leftist indoctrination in our schools and will continue to loudly call this crap out to defend our kids.”
