JD Vance Calls Democrats “Childless Cat Ladies”; GOP Opposes Paid Leave, Universal Child Care

AMY GOODMAN: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance has doubled down on his remarks that the Democratic Party is being led by what he called “childless cat ladies.” Vance made the original comment on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox at the time in 2021.

JD VANCE: We’re effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, be it 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, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. And it’s just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.

AMY GOODMAN: Kamala Harris is a stepmother of two children. At the time of Vance’s remarks, Pete Buttigieg was in the middle of the adoption process and welcomed his twins shortly afterwards with his husband while serving as secretary of transportation.

Also in 2021, Vance advocated for a voting system that would allow people with children to cast more votes, on behalf of their children. Vance addressed the controversy Friday in a new interview on The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM, defending his remarks and repeating his claim that Democrats are anti-family.

SEN. JD VANCE: Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I’ve got nothing against cats. I’ve got nothing against dogs. And I’ve got one dog at home, and I love him, Megyn. But, look, this is not — people are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said. And the substance of what I said, Megyn, I’m sorry, it’s true.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as CNN reports Ohio Senator JD Vance has been “historically unpopular” and currently has a net favorability rating of negative-16 points in his home region, compared to negative-five-point net favorability in nationwide polls.

For more, we’re joined by two guests. In San Francisco, Renee Bracey Sherman is with us, reproductive justice activist, abortion storyteller and writer, who’s founder and co-founder — co-executive director of We Testify. Her new article in Teen Vogue is headlined “JD Vance Doesn’t Want All Women to Be Trad Wives, Just White Women.” Her forthcoming book is titled Liberating Abortion: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve. And in New York, Jessica Grose is with us, opinion writer for The New York Times whose new piece is headlined “Attacking Kamala Harris for Not Having Kids Will Backfire” — not to mention it’s not true. Her other recent piece is headlined “Traditional Marriage for Thee but Not for J.D. Vance.” Grose is the author of Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Jessica Grose, let’s begin with you. If you can respond to these comments that, yes, that Senator JD Vance made when he was running for Senate in 2021, but did not back down when talking about what he said just recently?

JESSICA GROSE: Well, I don’t think whether or not you have children affects whether or not you support pro-family policies for the United States. We saw Build Back Better fail, and that had many provisions that were extremely pro-family. And you can argue, “OK, well, maybe that wasn’t the best bill.” We don’t see Republicans supporting things like paid leave, like child care. We don’t see them out front in terms of pro-family policy.

And so, I just find the entire line of attack to be ridiculous and also unpopular, insulting people who are deeply involved in children’s lives, whether or not they happen to be those children’s biological parents. Voters of all political persuasions have that background. And why are you offending them for no reason?

AMY GOODMAN: This is another newly uncovered video from 2021, in which JD Vance blames critical media coverage of him on journalists who are “miserable,” “childless adults.”

JD VANCE: Many of the most unhappy and most miserable and most angry people in our media are childless adults. Let’s just be honest about it. Because, look, the elite model, the American dream to the elites, is get as much credentials as you can, get as much money as you can, get the most prestigious job, and that’s where you’re going to find your self-worth. But I’ve got to be honest with you: Most of our mainstream reporters are not impressive enough to find a lot of self-meaning in their jobs. They’re just not good enough at it.

AMY GOODMAN: Jessica Grose, your response, and how people are responding to this, and where this line — where his attacks are coming from?

JESSICA GROSE: Well, first, I want to point out that I had children younger than he did, so, you know, the media is not just filled with people who don’t have children, who are bitter. I think it is a way to paint Republicans as the pro-family party, and the media, which he categorizes as liberal, while it contains people with all sorts of backgrounds, as being anti-family and being bitter and trying to encourage other people to be bitter, when that couldn’t be further from the truth.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to — I wanted to quote Pete Buttigieg, play a clip, who responded to JD Vance’s remarks in a recent CNN interview.

TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY PETE BUTTIGIEG: The really sad thing is, he said that after Chasten and I had been through a fairly heartbreaking setback in our adoption journey. He couldn’t have known that, but maybe that’s why you shouldn’t be talking about other people’s children.

And it’s not about his kids or my kids or the vice president’s family. It’s about your family, people’s families, whose well-being will depend on whether we go into a future led by somebody, like Kamala Harris, who is focused on expanding the prosperity, the freedom, the well-being of our families — and, by the way, especially if you have kids and you’re worried about climate, choosing between a party that has a plan on climate that creates jobs and a party that still calls it a hoax, even as we just went through the hottest day in world history. Or do you want your children to grow up in a country defined by a return to the chaos and recrimination and cruelty that was the hallmark of the Trump era?

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Friends actress Jennifer Aniston was one of many who criticized Vance’s comments. She posted on Instagram, quote, “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States. All I can say is… Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day. I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too,” unquote. Vance responded to Aniston in an interview with Megyn Kelly, saying, “Well, first of all, that’s disgusting because my daughter is 2 years old. And second of all, if she had fertility problems, as I said in that speech, I would try everything I could to try to help her because I believe families and babies are a good thing.” Jessica Grose, if you can respond to that and also his stance on IVF in the Senate?

JESSICA GROSE: Well, I think he voted against a bill that would have enshrined protections for IVF. So, that shows me that if it becomes a partisan issue, we know which side he’s on. And I think just having people being supportive of all different kinds of families is a much more appealing idea than trying to divide us by what our family status may or may not be. And if we want a future where people can have the families that they want and build the families they want, I don’t really see him being broadly supportive of the policies that would help that.

To give him a little bit of credit, he is supportive of a child tax credit. But he also accused Kamala Harris of not being supportive of a child tax credit, when she has been out front of being extremely supportive of that policy.

AMY GOODMAN: You also note, if elected, Harris will not be the first American president with no biological children. You write, “There were five others: George Washington, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, James Polk and James Buchanan. (Warren Harding had a child out of wedlock [and] publicly denied paternity; that he was the father was confirmed by DNA testing almost a century later.)” If you can talk about the sexist double standard, Jessica?

JESSICA GROSE: Sure. I think there’s still this idea that if you are a woman, unless you bear children, you are somehow less than. And I think it just devalues all of us to divide us this way, to put our worth into whether we are able to or desiring of having our own children. I just can’t think of something that is less American than not giving people the freedom to decide what they want to do with their bodies and their family building.

So, I just think it has absolutely nothing to do with how you legislate. People — at baseline, any legislator should be able to come up with policy and support policy that has nothing to do with them, because that’s what being a legislator is. It is representing all of the people, whether they voted for you or not. And so, I think whether someone has biological children is completely irrelevant to whether or not they’re a good leader. And there’s a history of people being terrible parents who are also leaders, and we don’t think of them as any less than in terms of whether or not they were good legislators. It is a completely different question.

AMY GOODMAN: You have also pointed out, in looking at presidents and vice presidents and their opinion on this — has Trump made any comment on this?

JESSICA GROSE: I have not seen him comment directly on anything that JD Vance has said. He was asked a question about child care during the debate with Joe Biden, and he didn’t answer it at all. He responded with some sort of word salad about how Biden is terrible, and did not answer the substance of the question at all. So, who knows what he thinks or what policy he might support? When he was president, you know, he really did not do much in terms of family policy. And so, I would not be optimistic that a Trump presidency would be particularly pro-family.

AMY GOODMAN: In 2021, JD Vance wrote on social media, “’Universal child care’ is a massive subsidy to the lifestyle preferences of the affluent over the preferences of the middle and working class.” Can you respond?

JESSICA GROSE: I think that it implies that only affluent women want to work after they have children. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. People up and down the socioeconomic ladder have different preferences. There are wealthy women who would prefer to stay home, and there are affluent women who would prefer to work. There are women with fewer resources who would prefer to stay home, and there’s women with fewer resources who would prefer to work. And so, claiming that, you know, how much money you have or how much education you have is directly correlated with wanting to work after you have children is just false.

And I think that, you know, child care, whether that is in a group, whether it’s family child care, whether it is helping parents stay home, if that is what they would prefer, I think feminists and liberals want to support all of those choices. But when I was researching my book, people would tell me, “I can’t afford to work, and I can’t afford to stay home,” because their family needed the income from them working, but they didn’t make enough to pay for child care. And that is putting American families in impossible situations where their preferences aren’t even coming up. So, let’s get families the help that they need to even be able to make the choices that they would prefer to make.

AMY GOODMAN: Also, Vance’s views on no-fault divorce and pornography are now surfacing. How does that — how do you reconcile those views with his running mate, Donald Trump, who is three times divorced and, of course, was found liable for paying money to a porn star, an adult movie star?

JESSICA GROSE: I mean, they’re not reconcilable. I don’t know what to say. Like, they’re completely opposite. We know who’s at the top of the ticket. I think also, you know, Vance is sort of a self-proclaimed troll. So, I don’t even know how seriously he takes all of these things he said. He appeared on a lot of podcasts and said a lot of things that were pretty wild, including, you know, parents should deserve more votes, because they have children and they should have more of a say in our democracy. So, I don’t know what to think about all of that. But certainly, I don’t think that Donald Trump would support getting rid of no-fault divorce, if only for his own self-interest.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Jessica Grose, we’ll link to your op-ed piece in The New York Times, “Attacking Kamala Harris for Not Having Kids Will Backfire.” Jessica’s book is Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood.