Senator JD Vance is still feeling the fallout from the resurfacing of his “childless cat lady” comments from years ago, but his wife Usha is now coming to the rescue.
The 38-year-old mother of three spoke to Fox News to discuss how her life has changed since JD became the Republican vice presidential nominee.
Usha also spoke about her thoughts on her husband’s now-viral and highly criticized comments and said that the Ohio senator never intended to “hurt” women struggling to start a family.
She said some of the ratings she sees of her husband “aren’t accurate” and that the criticism “isn’t the JD I know.”
“We’ve been doing this for a while and I’ve gotten used to it and developed a thick skin,” the attorney said of how the negative press about her and her family affects her.
Usha Vance defended her husband JD Vance’s comments about being a “childless cat lady” and responded to how negative press affects her and her family
She said in the interview with Ainsley Earhardt that aired in part on Fox & Friends Monday morning: “He made a joke to make a point that he wanted to make and that was substantial.”
The entire line of attack against Vance stems from a 2021 interview with then-Fox host Tucker Carlson.
“In reality, we are run in this country by Democrats, by our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat-loving women who are miserable with their own lives and the choices they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too,” Sen. Vance said at the time.
Critics on the left immediately attacked the publication of the comments from three years ago, saying it was an attack on women who cannot or choose not to have children.
Even some conservatives and Republicans were upset that the comments could be harmful to women who have fertility problems and to couples who cannot have children of their own.
“JD absolutely, at the time and today would never, ever, ever want to say anything that would hurt someone who was trying to have a family and was really, you know, struggling with that,” Usha Vance said when asked what her message was for women offended by the comments.
She continued: “And I also understand that there are many other reasons why people may choose not to have a family, and many of those reasons are very good.”
Usha joined JD at the Republican National Convention last month, where the Ohio senator became the vice presidential candidate alongside Donald Trump.
“Let’s try to look at the actual conversation that he’s trying to have and engage in it and understand it,” Usha continued. “For those of us who have families, for the many of us who want to have families and for whom it’s really difficult. What can we do to make it better?”
“What can we do to make it easier to live in 2024 and live a very full life that’s not just professional, but also has this kind of rich personal and community life behind it?”
JD and Usha, the daughter of Indian immigrants, have three children together: Ewan, 6, Vivek, 4, and Mirabel, 2.
They met at Yale, where they both attended law school.