This story was originally reported by Grace Panetta of The 19th. Meet Grace and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.
Vice President JD Vance admits years later that it was a “boneheaded” move to impugn Democrats, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, as “childless cat ladies.”
Vance calls the insults, which he made in 2021, “one of the dumbest things I ever said” in his forthcoming book “Communion,” according to NBC News, which obtained a copy of the memoir before its publication Tuesday. The book, which follows his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” focuses on Vance’s journey with faith and his conversion to Roman Catholicism.
“The comment caused two firestorms: the first when I made it, the second years later during a political campaign,” Vance wrote in the memoir, per NBC News. “It was a boneheaded comment, intentionally (and successfully) provocative rather than illuminating.”
Vance said in the book that the “enraging” remarks, which resurfaced after President Donald Trump selected him as his running mate in 2024, “had the added benefit of distracting from the actual point I wanted to make, which was that our society is becoming pathologically hostile to having kids,” according to the outlet.
Vance repeatedly defended the cat lady broadsides in 2024, saying he was being “sarcastic” and that “making a joke three years ago is not at the top 10 of the list” of his regrets. But nearly two years later, Vance is striking a different tone. Call it revenge of the cat ladies.
“When I consider the Church’s admonition to respect the dignity of every life, this was a clear moment where I failed,” he wrote. Vance is widely seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2028.
Vance also addresses abortion in the book, calling it “one of the most challenging issues for Christians,” and acknowledges the overturning of Roe v. Wade “revealed the political unpopularity of our position,” per NBC. He campaigned against a 2023 referendum in Ohio that enshrined access to the procedure.
In a July 2021 speech to a conservative think tank and subsequent interview with Fox News, he criticized “the childless left,” saying, “Why have we let the Democrat Party become controlled by people who don’t have children?”
On both occasions, Vance explicitly called out Harris, Sen. Cory Booker, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Harris has two stepchildren, and Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten, welcomed twins in September 2021.
“We are effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made,” Vance told Tucker Carlson on Fox News when he was running for U.S. Senate in Ohio.
Vance also disparaged the economist and liberal columnist Paul Krugman as “one of many weird cat ladies who have too much power in our country” in a July 2021 tweet and in a September 2021 tweet remarked: “These cat ladies, man. They must be stopped.”
Vance’s comments, which many saw as emblematic of Republicans’ electoral struggles with unmarried women, quickly took on a life of their own, inspiring T-shirts, hats and stickers. Taylor Swift, pop star and owner of three cats, signed off her Instagram post endorsing Harris as “Taylor Swift, childless cat lady.”
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This post was previously published on 19THNEWS.ORG.
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