Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance has responded to Jennifer Aniston after she criticized him for his resurgent complaint about “childless cat ladies” running the country.
Vance appeared on The Megyn Kelly Show on Friday to defend the anti-feline statement he made in 2021, which sparked a massive backlash from cat lovers across the country.
The Ohio senator said childless women have no “direct stake” in America’s future and said they are “miserable with their own lives and their choices.”
His comments sparked the ire of Aniston, 55, who said: “Mr Vance, I pray your daughter is lucky enough to have children of her own one day. I hope she doesn’t have to resort to IVF as a second option, because you’re trying to take that away from her too.”
In response, Vance said: “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 have been circulating online.
His comments drew the ire of Aniston, 55, who is pictured here in New York City on July 27.
“And secondly, if she were to have fertility issues, as I said in that speech, I would try everything I could to try to help her because I believe that families and babies are a good thing,” he added.
Resurrected footage shows Vance criticizing childless women like Kamala Harris while speaking to Tucker Carlson on Fox News.
In the clip, Vance criticized the prospect of handing the country over to childless women.
He said: ‘I’m saying that we are effectively ruled in this country through the Democrats by a bunch of childless cat-loving women who are miserable with their own lives and the choices they’ve made, so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.
“It’s a basic fact. If you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.
Vance’s wife Usha is seen here with their daughter Mirabel in a post on her Instagram page.
What is the point of handing over our country to people who have no interest in it?
The Friends star wasn’t the only person upset by 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 ready to do everything we can to elect President Kamala Harris! #YesWeKam,” one supporter wrote on X/Twitter.
The “childless” joke also prompted a response from Ella Emhoff, the vice president’s stepdaughter.
“How can you not have kids when you have such adorable kids like Cole and I?” Ella Emhoff wrote on Instagram, referring to her brother and Harris’ stepson, Cole.
She and Cole are the children of Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, and his ex-wife Kerstin, who also came to Harris’ defense.
“These are baseless attacks. For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has co-parented with Doug and I,” Kerstin said. “She is loving, protective and always there. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.”
During his appearance on Megyn Kelly’s show on Friday, Vance responded: “Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I have nothing against cats, I have nothing against dogs, I have a dog at home and I adore him.
“But look, people are focusing a lot on the sarcasm and not on the essence of what I actually said.”
Vance said both liberal and conservative women responded to the cat comments by saying they were “glad” he pointed out that there is “something deeply anti-family about our public policy.”
He tried to blame it on the Democrats’ policies.
“We have to ask ourselves: why are we still using masks for young children years after the pandemic is over?” she mused.
Vance also said Harris’ campaign spoke out against extending the child tax credit.
“Why did the Harris campaign come out just this morning and say that we shouldn’t have the child tax credit that lowers tax rates for parents of young children?” the vice presidential candidate asked. That claim appears to be false.
The Biden administration’s current position is that the White House is “committed to restoring the American Rescue Plan’s critical expansion of the Child Tax Credit to help all American families and children.”
Vance voted against the Democratic-led IVF Rights Act last month, though he did support a GOP-sponsored bill, the IVF Protection Act, that would strip states of Medicaid funding if they banned IVF treatments, though it would allow some restrictions.
During the Q&A with Kelly, Vance explained that he was in favor of IVF within reason.
“I think we have to protect the right of Christian hospitals to operate as they wish,” he said. “But of course that is entirely consistent with promoting fertility treatments for parents who need them.”
