Usha Vance is defending controversial comments made by her husband, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, about “childless cat women,” telling Fox News that she thinks critics have taken the comments too seriously.
Mr. Vance initially raised the controversy comment in a 2021 interview. He argued that childless people should not lead the country and that childless women are “miserable”.
The comments resurfaced after former President Donald Trump picked Mr Vance as his running mate. The backlash — from critics including the actress Jennifer Aniston – was quick, and so was Mr. Vance. defend your words.
Now, Ms. Vance weighed in, saying, Fox News that the comments were “just a joke” and she hopes people will consider the broader context of what her husband said.
Responding to criticism that his comments were offensive to people struggling with fertility issues, she said Mr Vance “never, never, never wanted to say something that would hurt someone who is trying to have a family, who is actually struggling with that”.
She said she understood that “there are many other reasons why people choose not to get married, and many of them are very valid.”
Mr. Vance was a Senate candidate at the time of the 2021 interview, which also took place on Fox News.
He told former NBC host Tucker Carlson that America is run by “a bunch of childless catgirls who are unhappy with their own lives and the choices they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”
He went on to question why several high-profile Democrats do not have children, including Kamala Harris, who is currently running to replace Joe Biden as president. Harris is the stepmother to her husband Doug Emhoff’s two children.
JD Vance argues that leaders without children are still making choices about the future even though they “really have no direct stake in it.”
He also said that people without children live in small apartments, pursue wealth, careers and “status” and end up “hating” people with families and homes, who he said are happier and more capable of leading the country.
Mr Vance, who has three children with Ms Vance, defended those comments – particularly about “cat-owning aunts who don’t have kids” – as a “sarcastic comment” intended to make his larger point.
“People focus too much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said,” Mr. Vance told conservative media personality Megyn Kelly.
He told the host that his remarks were not intended to belittle people who do not have children, but to criticize “the Democratic Party that has become anti-family and anti-child.”
