Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance has lashed out at Jennifer Aniston after she criticized him for his resurfaced complaint about the “childless cat ladies” running the country.
Vance appeared on The Megyn Kelly Show on Friday to defend his 2021 anti-cat statement, which prompted a massive backlash from cat lovers across the country.
The Ohio senator argued that women without children have no “direct stake” in America’s future. They are “unhappy with their own lives and their choices,” the senator said.
His comments sparked the ire of Aniston, 55, who said: “Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is lucky enough to have children of her own one day. 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 responded, “That’s disgusting because my daughter is 2 years old.”
Vance appeared on The Megyn Kelly Show on Friday to defend comments he made to Fox in 2021 that were recirculated online
His comments drew the ire of Aniston, 55, who is seen here in New York City on July 27.
“And secondly, if she had fertility problems, as I said in that speech, I would do everything I could to help her, because I believe that families and babies are a good thing,” he added.
The resurfaced footage shows Vance criticizing childless women like Kamala Harris during a conversation with Tucker Carlson on Fox News.
In the clip, Vance criticized the idea of the country falling into the hands of childless women.
He said, ‘I’m saying that in this country we’re basically governed by the Democrats and a bunch of childless cat ladies who are unhappy with their own lives and the choices they’ve made, and who want to make the rest of the country unhappy too.
“It’s just a basic fact. Look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people who don’t have children.
Vance’s wife Usha is seen here with their daughter Mirabel in a post on his Instagram page
‘How is it possible that we hand over our country to people who have no interest in it?’
The Friends star wasn’t the only one upset about Vance’s comments. Democratic women across the country immediately came to Harris’ defense, launching a Childless Cat Ladies for Kamala meme.
“My cats and I are MORE than willing to do whatever it takes to get President Kamala Harris elected! #YesWeKam,” one supporter wrote on X/Twitter.
The jibe about “childlessness” also prompted a response from Ella Emhoff, the vice president’s stepdaughter.
“How can you be ‘childless’ when you have such adorable children as Cole and I,” Ella Emhoff wrote on Instagram, referring to her brother and Harris’ stepson Cole.
Ella and Cole are the children of Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, and his ex-wife Kerstin, who also stood up for Harris.
“These are unfounded attacks. For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has co-parented with Doug and me,” Kerstin said. “She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her as a part of it.”
During his Friday appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show, Vance responded, “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.
“But look, people are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the content of what I actually said.”
According to Vance, both liberal and conservative women responded to the cat comments by saying they were “glad” that he pointed out that there is “something fundamentally anti-family in our government policy.”
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 is the Harris campaign coming out this morning and saying we shouldn’t have a child tax credit, which lowers tax rates for parents of young children?” the VP candidate said. That claim appears to be false.
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.”
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.”
