JD Vance’s attack on Kamala Harris sparks “disgust”

Footage of JD Vance apparently implying that Vice President Kamala Harris is one of “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are unhappy with their own lives” has gone viral as his comments sparked outrage online.

The Ohio senator – whom Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump chose as his running mate for 2024 – seemed to suggest that people without children should not be allowed to work in politics because they have “no direct stake” in the country.

He is believed to have made the claims in 2022 during a Fox News interview with Tucker Carlson while he was running for Senate. Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of the liberal news site MeidasTouch.com, posted the clip on Monday on X, formerly Twitter. It has since been viewed more than 5 million times.

Vance’s comments sparked criticism across the platform, with one X user writing that he had stoked “primal hatred and disgust” in her. News of his comments comes amid a flood of racist and sexist abuse aimed at Harris online after she became the frontrunner for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. President Joe Biden withdrew from the campaign over the weekend and endorsed Harris.

The vice president has two stepchildren, who call her “Momala.” However, conservatives criticize Harris for not having biological children and even say that she should be disqualified from office because of this.

Vance told Carlson: “We are essentially run in this country – by the Democrats, by our corporate oligarchs – by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are unhappy with their own lives and the choices they’ve made and therefore want to make the rest of the country unhappy. That’s just a basic fact.”

“When you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg and AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And what is the point of giving our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

Newsweek has emailed representatives for Vance and Harris for comment.

X users commented on the clip to express their disgust at Vance’s comments, with some saying that under Republican logic, Founding Father George Washington would not have been fit to be president because he had no children of his own but was a stepfather who helped raise his wife’s children from her first marriage.

“This should be the end of my career,” wrote one user. “JD Vance has contempt for the millions of Americans who don’t have children – whether by choice or because they can’t.”

“A woman’s reproductive history is none of your business and cruel to women. My daughter can’t get pregnant. She doesn’t have to explain to everyone why she is childless. It’s personal and unbearably painful,” added another.

“So… does that include Catholic nuns, women who have been unable to conceive due to infertility, women who are delaying having children, women who have survived cancer treatments but whose reproductive organs are compromised?” wrote one commenter. “This twisted notion that women who have given birth are the only women who have a direct stake in America is just weird.”

Commentators who identified themselves as Republicans said they were baffled that Vance would risk alienating a key voting base.

“I’m a right-leaning woman who disagrees with almost nothing the Biden-Harris administration has done, but the primal hatred and disgust Vance stirs in me goes beyond politics. I suspect I’m not the only woman of my generation, so to speak, who feels this way,” wrote one user, adding in a separate post, “Vancing Vance just feels like embracing bro culture full-on.”

Other users said that people without children, including “women who simply don’t want children,” are just as capable of empathy and patriotism as anyone else, and that being a parent does not automatically equate to qualities that make a person fit for office.

Users who said they were stepparents commented that it was hurtful to hear Vance seemingly negate their families, while another commenter asked about “adoptive and foster parents. I wonder how they feel when they are told their parenting performance is inferior.”

One user said of Vance after watching the clip: “He forgot that childless cat ladies vote.”