It’s not just ‘cat ladies’: JD Vance has a history of disparaging people without kids

By Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck, CNN

(CNN) — Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance has a history of making disparaging remarks toward people without children, a CNN KFile review of his comments shows, including fundraising off his now-infamous “childless cat lady” remarks in a series of emails that called Democratic leaders “childless sociopaths” who “don’t have a direct stake in this country.”

In November 2020, Vance said on a conservative podcast that childless Americans, especially those in the country’s “leadership class,” were “more sociopathic” than those with children and made the country “less mentally stable.” Vance added that the “most deranged” and “most psychotic” commentators on Twitter – now known as X – were typically childless.

In August 2021, one month after launching his candidacy for the Senate, Vance’s campaign sent fundraising emails referring to the “radical childless leaders in this country” following his appearance on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” where he made comments deriding “childless cat ladies” and leaders running the country. The comments sparked a widespread backlash against Vance when they resurfaced on social media following his nomination to the Republican presidential ticket.

Vance later tried to clean up his comments on Megyn Kelly’s podcast last week. “Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I’ve got nothing against cats,” said Vance, adding that his remarks were not about criticizing people without children, but rather focused on policy and claimed the Democratic Party has become “anti-family” and “anti-child.”

A CNN KFile analysis found several examples over the course of a few years of Vance saying similarly disparaging things when talking about people without children — usually while targeting Democratic officials.

“There are just these basic cadences of life that I think are really powerful and really valuable when you have kids in your life,” Vance said in November 2020 on a conservative podcast. “And the fact that so many people, especially in America’s leadership class, just don’t have that in their lives.”

“You know, I worry that it makes people more sociopathic and ultimately our whole country a little bit less, less mentally stable,” he said. “And of course, you talk about going on Twitter – final point I’ll make is you go on Twitter and almost always the people who are most deranged and most psychotic are people who don’t have kids at home.”

In September 2021, Vance tweeted that “cat ladies…must be stopped” in response to a report that a higher percentage of Americans fear having children because of climate change. In another tweet a month later, Vance wrote, “Our country’s low birth rates have made many elites sociopaths.”

In a statement to CNN, Vance spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk said, “As [Senator Vance] has clearly stated, he was talking about politicians on the left who support policies that are explicitly anti-child and anti-family. The media can obsess over it all they want, but he’s not going to back down when it comes to advocating for policies that protect parental rights and encourage people to have more kids.”

Broader pattern

The multiple examples of similar remarks demonstrate that Vance’s “childless cat ladies” comment to Carlson was part of a broader pattern of him pressing the culture war by, in part, singling out Democratic leaders for not having children.

Vance would later fundraise off those 2021 remarks in a series of emails obtained by CNN from a commentator who posted them on social media at the time.

“Did you see me on FOX Primetime recently? I needed to speak DIRECTLY to patriots like you about the serious issue of radical childless leaders in this country,” reads one Vance fundraising email from August 2021. “We can’t have people who don’t have a direct stake in this country making our most important decisions.

“We’ve allowed ourselves to be dominated by childless sociopaths – they’re invested in NOTHING because they’re not invested in this country’s children. Fighting back won’t be easy – our childless opponents have a lot of free time. That’s why I need YOU to stand with me.”

Another fundraising email reads, “Our country is basically run by childless Democrats who are miserable in their own lives and want to make the rest of the country miserable too… What I want to know is: why have we turned our country over to people who don’t have a direct stake in it?”

After facing backlash in the summer of 2021 for those inflammatory comments, Vance later defended them in a Spectrum News podcast that September, saying, “I think that it’s ridiculous to say that they’re misogynistic ‘cause so many of the proposals that I have would actually help not just working families, but working women, too.”

In a 2019 speech, Vance articulated his belief in the positive impact that children have on society and individual lives. He explained that many of his views on children and society stem from observing how becoming a father can transform young men he knew from being “driftless” to becoming “rooted” and “grounded” members of society.

“I care about declining fertility because I’ve seen the role of fatherhood, the positive role that it can play in the lives of my friends and in my community,” he said. “I’ve seen young men who were relatively driftless but became rooted and grounded when they had children.”

“I’ve seen people who become more attached to their communities, to their families, to their country because they have children,” he added. “And in my own life, I felt the demons that come from a traumatic childhood melt away in the laughter and the love of my own son. So, I would say that we should care about declining fertility, not just because it’s bad for our economy, but because we think babies are good and we think babies are good because we’re not sociopaths.”

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