Does J.D. Vance Regret His ‘Childless Cat Lady’ Comments Yet?
In 2021, during his run for an Ohio Senate seat, J.D. Vance went on Fox News to talk about his crusade against what he called the “childless left.” “We’re effectively run in this country, be it the Democrats, be it our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies,” he told Tucker Carlson, “who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.” He listed Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and lamented that the “entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” concluding that these politicians therefore “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country’s future.
As we now know, Vance’s words would come back to haunt him. Three years later, shortly after Vance became Donald Trump’s choice for vice-president, journalist Ron Filipkowski recirculated a clip from that 2021 interview, prompting a renewed bout of backlash. Since then, “childless cat ladies” has become a rallying cry among Harris’s supporters, particularly those who have no kids and/or a special affection for felines, and one extremely influential celebrity. This week, Taylor Swift signed off her long-awaited presidential endorsement as “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady.” Here’s how we got here.
JD Vance says women who haven’t given birth like Kamala Harris are “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives,” and have “no direct stake” in America. pic.twitter.com/3DJY3pQTGe
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 22, 2024
The 2021 “childless cat lady” clip recirculated in July, sparking outrage.
Vance’s comments may not have made much of a splash when he was an aspiring congressman, but now that he’s on Trump’s platform, they fall right in line with the far-right’s pro-natalist push. The clip ticked off a lot of people, including former Trump administration member Alyssa Farah Griffin and even Meghan McCain, who claimed Vance’s “innately un-Christian” comments were “activating women across all sides, including my most conservative Trump-supporting friends.”
While people who don’t have children are perfectly capable of leading countries, Harris actually is a parent — she has two stepchildren, Ella and Cole, with her husband, Doug Emhoff. Emhoff’s ex-wife, film producer Kerstin Emhoff, called Vance’s comments about Harris “baseless attacks,” adding, “For over ten years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and me. She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.” Ella reposted Kerstin’s comments and chimed in with: “How can you be ‘childless’ when you have cutie pie kids like Cole and I?” and “I love my three parents.”
Jennifer Aniston wasn’t impressed, either.
One of the loudest critics was Jennifer Aniston, who wrote in her Instagram stories, “Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day.” She was referring to the fact that Vance voted against codifying IVF rights in June amid a mounting conservative attack on fertility treatments, and she added that she hopes Vance’s daughter “will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”
A few days later, Vance, who claims to support IVF treatments despite voting against them, seemed to fire back at Aniston on The Megyn Kelly Show. “Hollywood celebrities say, ‘Oh, well, J.D. Vance, what if your daughter suffered fertility problems?” he began. He called this theoretical “disgusting, because my daughter is 2 years old,” but added that he would “try everything I could to try to help her because I believe families and babies are a good thing.”
Still, Vance — and his wife — stand by his comments.
During his interview with Kelly, Vance also doubled down on what he’d said in the clip. “Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment,” he said when asked about the backlash, before joking: “I’ve got nothing against cats. I’ve got nothing against dogs.” He added that “people are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance … and the substance of what I said, Megyn — I’m sorry, it’s true.” He went on to claim that “this is not about criticizing people who for various reasons didn’t have kids. This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.” Meanwhile, Vance’s party has failed to lay out a coherent plan for lowering child-care costs or expanding the Child Tax Credit and is waging war on family-planning necessities like contraception and abortion.
A few weeks later, Vance’s wife, Usha, mounted a similar defense, telling Fox News that her husband had “made a quip in service of making a point that he wanted to make that was substantive.” She added, “I just wish sometimes that people would talk about those things and that we would spend a lot less time just sort of going through this three-word phrase or that three-word phrase.” She also insisted that Vance was actually trying to point out that “it can be really hard to be a parent in this country.” If that really was what he was saying — and I have my doubts — it’s hard to believe Vance wants to make life easier for parents when he’s so vehemently against universal child care.
Taylor Swift called herself a “childless cat lady” when she endorsed Kamala Harris.
Unfortunately for Vance, that “three-word phrase” has proven a very effective marketing tool for the Harris campaign — probably because many childless women have no problem proudly proclaiming themselves as such. Etsy is flooded with “Childless Cat Lady for Kamala” tees, and the turn of phrase has also inspired some creative lawn signs. Vance’s comments also spurred the creation of several Cat Ladies for Kamala Harris Facebook groups, one of which has 103,000 members.
But the final nail in the coffin came when Swift signed her endorsement of Harris “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady.” She posted her message alongside a photo of herself with her cat from her Time magazine “Person of the Year” shoot, reportedly also a sore subject for Trump. Following in her footsteps, Stevie Nicks endorsed Harris later on Wednesday, signing her message “Childless Dog Lady.”
If celebrities have any say, Vance will be haunted by his bad attempt at a diss forever. Has an insult ever backfired this badly?
Related