Donald Trump’s running mate’s reactions JD Vance made in 2021 vice president interrogation Kamala Harris’ leadership qualities of not having biological children have resurfaced, testing the young conservative senator in his first days on the campaign trail as part of the Republican presidential nomination.
During Vance’s bid for the Ohio Senate, he said in a Fox News interview that “we’re basically run by Democrats in this country,” calling them “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are unhappy with their own lives and the choices they’ve made and want to make the rest of the country unhappy.” He said this included Harris, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York.
“How does it make sense that we turned our country over to people who really have no direct interest in it?” Vance asked. Harris became a stepmother to two teenagers when she married entertainment attorney Douglas Emhoff in 2014. And Buttigieg announced in September 2021 that he and his husband had adopted twin babies, more than a month before Vance made those comments.
The clip spread online after Hillary Clinton shared it in a post on X on Tuesday, sarcastically adding, “What a normal, relatable man who definitely doesn’t hate women having freedoms.”
Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Harris’ campaign disputed Vance’s position, saying “every American has a stake in the future of this country.” “Ugly, personal attacks from J.D. Vance and Donald Trump are part of their dangerous Project 2025 agenda to ban abortion, decimate our democracy and gut Social Security,” said James Singer, a spokesman for Harris’ campaign, referring to a policy and personnel plan for a second Trump term that was drafted by a host of former administration officials. Trump has tried to distance himself from it.
The recirculated comment could be a sign of the ticket’s difficulties appealing to female voters and on the issue of reproductive rights. It follows the explosive entrance into the race of Harris, who secured the support of enough delegates to become the official nominee less than 32 hours after President Joe Biden ended his re-election bid.
It also describes some of the fears strategists expressed that Trump was taking a political risk in choose a running mate who has been in Congress for less than two years and doesn’t have much experience on a bigger stage. Trump liked Vance’s telegenic qualities, saying he reminded him of “a young Abraham Lincoln.”
Vance, 39, is a former Marine and businessman who was first elected to public office in 2022. He wrote the 2016 bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy” and developed a strong bond with Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and leading MAGA figures with his personal story of growing up in poverty in Appalachia with a mother struggling with drug addiction, which could resonate with voters.
One of the biggest questions facing Vance is his position on abortion. previously said He is said to be in favor of a national ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
In 2021, Vance floated the idea of giving parents the ability to vote on behalf of their children. Speaking at the conservative nonprofit Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Virginia, he said that people who don’t have children “don’t have as much of a stake in the future of the country.”
“When you go to the polls as a parent in this country, you should have more power, you should have more opportunities to make your voice heard in our democratic republic than people who don’t have children,” he said.
“Doesn’t this mean that non-parents don’t have as much say as parents do?” critics asked at the time. “Doesn’t this mean that parents have more say in how a democracy functions? Yes, absolutely.”