Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance said Friday his comment about the “childless cat lady” was “sarcastic,” but he reiterated the Democrats’ “anti-family” and “anti-child” positions.
“It was clearly a sarcastic comment. I have nothing against cats, I have nothing against dogs, I have one dog at home and I love him,” the Ohio Republican said. “But look, people are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the content of what I actually said.”
Vance was taping an episode of The Megyn Kelly Show amid a furor over the resurfaced comment that angered a number of women, including actress Jennifer Aniston and countless Taylor Swift fans.
The vice presidential nominee claimed that both liberal and conservative women responded to the cat comments by saying they were “glad” that Vance pointed out that there is “something fundamentally anti-family in our government policy.”
Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance said Friday that his comment about the “childless cat lady” was “sarcastic,” but he reiterated that Democrats have “anti-family” and “anti-child” positions.
He tried to attribute that to the policies of the Democrats.
“We have to ask ourselves, why are toddlers still wearing masks years after the pandemic is over?” he mused.
Vance also claimed that Harris’ campaign opposed the child benefit extension.
“Why does the Harris campaign show up this morning and say we shouldn’t have a child allowance because it lowers tax rates for parents of young children?” the vice presidential candidate said.
That claim turns out to be incorrect.
The current position of the Biden administration is that the White House is “committed to restoring the critical expansion of the child tax credit in the American Rescue Plan to help all American families and children.”
And Axios reported on Wednesday that Harris, as president, would push for an expansion of the child tax credit, as she did in the Senate and led efforts to achieve it after the improved version that was part of the American Rescue Plan expired.
That failed, because Republican senators and some moderate Democrats were unable to get it done.
Aniston’s biggest beef with Trump’s vice president was Vance’s opposition to IVF treatments.
“All I can say is… Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is lucky enough to have children of her own one day,” Aniston wrote in a rare political Instagram post. “I hope she doesn’t have to have IVF as a second option. Because you’re trying to take that away from her too.”
Vance voted against the Democratic-backed Right to IVF Act last month, but supported a Republican-backed bill, the IVF Protection Act, that would strip states of their Medicaid funding if they banned IVF treatments, but would come with some restrictions.
During his Q&A with Kelly, Vance explained that, within reason, he was pro-IVF.
“I think we need to protect the rights of Christian hospitals to operate in the way they want to operate,” he said. “But that is of course completely consistent with promoting fertility treatment for parents who need it.”
