Senator JD Vance of Ohio, former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate, on Friday dug in on his past remarks lamenting that the United States was being run by Democrats without children, arguing that their party had become “very anti-child in their messaging and their public policy.”
“This is not about criticizing people who, for various reasons, didn’t have kids,” Mr. Vance told Megyn Kelly on her SiriusXM radio program, “The Megyn Kelly Show.” “This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.”
In a wide-ranging conversation that spanned Mr. Vance’s biography and issues such as immigration and race and gender equity initiatives that were central to the Republican National Convention last week, Mr. Vance said that his earlier comments, which prompted bipartisan outrage, had not been aimed at specific families but instead were a broader argument against what he described as a shift in American society against having children.
He chastised the nation’s low birthrate, saying that Democrats believed they could “replace American children with immigrants,” and cast himself as a political leader willing to take on the left for what he has called its “rejection of the American family.”
“That is what I think the Republican Party stands for,” he said. “We’re the party of parents with kids, and we want to fight for parents and children to have good lives.”
Mr. Vance has come under fire in recent days from elected officials, celebrities and Taylor Swift fans for his past comments condemning Democrats without children, which have resurfaced in the heat of the 2024 presidential campaign. It is a moment when many women, in polls and at the ballot box, are defending their right to make their own choices — about abortion, birth control, access to fertility services or not having children at all.
In an earlier policy speech, an excerpt of which Ms. Kelly aired on her show, Mr. Vance denounced the “childless left,” and named Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, as one of her party’s next generation of leaders who he said did not have a “physical commitment” to the future of the nation. In another clip, from a 2021 interview with Fox News, Mr. Vance contended that the United States was being run by “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.” He again named Ms. Harris.
Ms. Harris received a powerful showing of support this week from the mother of her stepchildren and one of her stepdaughters.
In the interview on Friday, Mr. Vance said his remarks about “childless cat ladies” had been uttered sarcastically.
“I’ve got nothing against cats,” Mr. Vance said. “People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said.”
Mr. Vance said that he did not know Ms. Harris’s family situation and that he wished her and her family “the very best.” He said he had not been suggesting that Ms. Harris was “lesser” for not having biological children, but that her party had pursued “policies that are profoundly anti-child.”
In discussing the birthrate, Mr. Vance suggested that he had nothing against immigrants. “Obviously, I’m married to the daughter of immigrants,” he said, referring to his wife, Usha Vance. “But if your society is not having enough children to replace itself that is a profoundly dangerous and destabilizing thing. You look across history — that’s a real problem.”
Mr. Vance has previously echoed the “great replacement theory,” the far-right notion that undocumented immigrants are coming to the United States to usurp the political power of native-born white voters, an unsubstantiated notion that has proliferated despite the fact that undocumented immigrants cannot vote. In a 2022 campaign ad for his Senate seat in Ohio, he said that Democratic voters were “pouring into this country” through unchecked borders.
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