Comments JD Vance made in 2021 questioning the vice president Kamala Harris’ the lead because she had no biological children resurfaced, testing the young conservative senator in her early days of campaigning as part of the Republican presidential ticket.
During Vance’s run for Senate in Ohio, he said in a Fox News interview that “we are effectively governed in this country by the Democrats” and referred to them as “a bunch of childless hotties who are unhappy with their own lives and the choices they’ve made that they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.” He said that included Harris, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York.
“How does it make sense for us to hand over our country to people who really have no direct stake in it?” asked Vance, who is now Donald Trump’s running mate. Harris became a stepmother to two teenagers when she got married. entertainment lawyer Douglas Emhoff in 2014. And Buttigieg announced that he and his husband adopted baby twins in September 2021, more than a month before Vance made those comments.
The clip began spreading online, with Hillary Clinton sharing it in a Tuesday post on X and sarcastically adding “what a normal, relatable guy who certainly doesn’t hate women having freedom.”
The recirculated comment could be a sign of the Republican ticket’s problems in attracting female voters and on the issue of reproductive rights. It follows the explosive entry into the race by Harris, who secured the support of enough delegates to become the official candidate less than 32 hours after President Joe Biden ended his re-election bid.
It also exposes some of the fears expressed by strategists that Trump took a political risk in choosing a running mate who has been in Congress for less than two years and has not been tested on a larger stage. Trump liked Vance’s telegenic qualities and said he reminded him of “a young Abraham Lincoln.”
Harris’ campaign disputed Vance’s position, saying “every American has a stake in the future of this country.”
“JD Vance and Donald Trump’s ugly personal attacks are in line with Project 2025’s dangerous agenda to ban abortion, decimate our democracy and destroy Social Security,” said Harris campaign spokesman James Singer, referring to on a political and personal level. for a second Trump term, drafted by a series of former administration officials. Trump has tried to distance himself from this. Project 2025 says the Department of Health and Human Services must “pursue a robust agenda” to protect “the fundamental right to life.” However, the document contains no proposals to reduce Social Security, although the Heritage Foundation, which oversaw it, has long pushed for changes to the entitlement. The plan describes a dramatic expansion of presidential power and a plan to fire up to 50,000 public employees.
Vance’s spokesperson said the Harris campaign is lying about Vance’s views, noting that his record is “filled with countless failures and disasters.”
“It is well known that Senator Vance has achieved success in life due, in large part, to the influence of strong female role models like his grandmother,” said spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk.
Vance, 39, is a former Marine and businessman who was elected to public office for the first time in 2022. He wrote the 2016 bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy” and developed a strong relationship with Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. .’s personal story of growing up in Appalachia in poverty with a mother struggling with drug addiction may resonate with voters.
One of the main issues facing Vance is his stance on abortion. Vance said previously he would support a federal bill to ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, but believes in certain exceptions.
In 2021, Vance floated the idea of allowing parents to vote on their children’s behalf, saying during a speech at the conservative nonprofit Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Virginia that people who don’t have children “don’t have as much investment in the future.” from the country.”
“When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power, you should have more availability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have children,” he said.
“Doesn’t that mean non-parents don’t have as much of a voice as parents?” he said critics would then ask. “Doesn’t this mean that parents have more of a say in the functioning of a democracy? Yes absolutely.”
