J.D. Vance's previous comments about Vice President Kamala Harris being "childless" have resurfaced. In July 2021, Vance, 39, made an appearance on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight and implied that presidential hopeful Kamala Harris is a "childless cat lady." Harris, 59, is stepmom to two kids. Another "childless" Democrat that Vance called out at the time was Pete Buttigieg, who adopted twins shortly after Vance made the comments.
On the show, Vance said, "We’re effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, 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."
Vance, who is Donald Trump's running mate in the 2024 presidential election, went on to list some of the people he was referring to, including Kamala Harris, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
"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," Vance said at the time. "And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people that don’t have a direct stake in it."
Of the three that he mentioned, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is 34 years old and got engaged in 2022, is the only one who currently doesn't have kids (Buttigieg didn't have kids at the time but does now).
After Vance's comments resurfaced, Buttigieg responded to them and revealed that the comments were kind of hurtful because he and his husband were navigating their adoption journey at the time.
"The really sad thing is, he said that after Chasten [Buttigieg] and I had been through a fairly heartbreaking setback in our adoption journey," he said on CNN’s The Source. "He couldn’t have known that, but maybe that’s why you shouldn’t be talking about other people’s children."
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The comments have made some people wonder what counts as "childless." Is Kamala not a "real mom" because she didn't give birth to children? Of course, there are many reasons why people might not have children, and sometimes it's not by choice. But Harris notably does have children: her stepchildren, Cole and Emma Emhoff.
In 2019, Harris wrote about being "Momala" to two children. "A few years later when Doug and I got married, Cole, Ella, and I agreed that we didn’t like the term 'stepmom,'" she wrote. "Instead they came up with the name 'Momala.'"
"They are brilliant, talented, funny kids who have grown to be remarkable adults. I was already hooked on Doug, but I believe it was Cole and Ella who reeled me in," Harris wrote in the piece.
Vance is not the only person who has criticized Harris for being "childless." Conservative commentator Will Chamberlain, who was a staffer for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, suggested that Harris' stepchildren don't count because they were older when she became a part of their lives.
"Really simple, underdiscussed reason why Kamala Harris shouldn’t be President," Chamberlain wrote on X on July 21, 2024. "No children."
Perhaps anticipating how people might respond to such a comment, Chamberlain responded to his own post, writing, "And no, becoming a step-parent to older teenagers doesn’t count."
The comments from Vance and other conservatives have lead to backlash and confusion about what kinds of parents count as "real parents" (Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski joked, "My kids are older. Does that make me childless?").
"Everyone is being very weird about this but Kamala Harris isn't childless," one person wrote on X. "She has two step children. It doesn't matter that she didn't squeeze them out herself or raise them from infancy. Feels real not great as a stepchild to be told that step parent relationships don't count."
Others pointed out how Vance's comments came across as misogynistic.
"Calling step-mom Kamala Harris a childless cat lady is going to enrage not just single women but all the parents of step-kids who are having their parenting denigrated," another person wrote on X. "Vance's history of misogyny is just an endless wellspring of hate to highlight."
"JD Vance called Kamala Harris a 'childless cat lady' despite her being married with two stepchildren because he's a misogynistic garbage fire," another person wrote on the platform. "Women only have value to the GOP as broodmares."
Another X user jokingly pointed out how the comments "should really help win over women voters, huh?"
Though many people found the comments to be offensive and problematic, some social media users have embraced the "childless cat lady" title, mocking Vance by posting pictures with their cats and writing that they support Kamala Harris.
