J.D. Vance Shredded for Hypocrisy of “Childless Cat Ladies” Comment

J.D. Vance is getting slammed for once calling Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, “childless cat ladies,” and all this newfound attention should probably worry him.

During an interview on Fox News’s now-canceled Tucker Carlson Tonight in July 2021, Vance took aim at Democratic politicians.

“We’re effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too,” Vance said.

“And it’s just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

To be clear, Vance is not objecting to actual childlessness. What he’s essentially saying is that only people who reproduce have a stake in America. While this statement was from years ago, this idea is still deeply embedded in his current campaign, which is built on pronatalism and his own phony brand of economic populism, which places the biological nuclear family at the center.

The clip’s resurfacing has led to an intense online firestorm that has attracted the attention of one high-profile critic, as well as a mob that Vance should truly fear.

Actress Jennifer Aniston took to Instagram to post the clip of Vance’s “childless cat lady” remark, with her own scathing criticism.

“I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States,” Aniston, who rarely makes political statements, wrote. “All I can say is … Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day. I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”

Aniston has been open about her struggles to get pregnant, including by trying IVF, but how she has no regrets that it didn’t pan out for her.

In June, Vance voted against legislation that would codify access to in vitro fertilization, a strange position for someone who purports to think of procreation as the barrier to entry for civic engagement.

Meanwhile, Vance has angered one group that should strike fear into the heart of any man: fans of pop singer and monocultural icon Taylor Swift, known as the Swifties.

Their beloved icon has proudly touted her cat lady status in the past, and so now, the internet is anticipating his imminent destruction at the hands of her devoted fans.

While the deafening far-right noise around Swift has died down a bit since the Super Bowl, she still has the ability to enrage conservatives and amass support around any issue of her choosing. Should she choose to direct her ire against Vance, or voice support for Harris to spite him, one can only imagine the intensity of the backlash that will follow.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who is in contention to be Harris’s vice presidential pick, may have summed it up the best: There are some lines you just don’t cross on the internet.

“My God, they went after ‘cat people,’ good luck with that! Turn on the internet and see what cat people do when you go after ’em,” he said Wednesday night.

Now that Senator J.D. Vance is Donald Trump’s running mate, he’s the subject of an internet rumor that he had sex with couch cushions in his younger days.

The rumors were so prevalent that Snopes and the Associated Press both were forced to debunk the tale. As the fact-checkers note, the rumor appears to have originated from an X post on July 15 from user rickrudescalves, who has since protected his account.

The rumor was that Vance told the story in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, but, as the AP and Snopes found, there is no such story in the book. That didn’t stop the rumor from spreading across the internet, even being picked up by actress and comedian Kathy Griffin.

Curiously, the AP took down its fact-check Thursday morning, spurring internet users to joke about how even the global news outlet can’t confidently rule it was a lie.

While there’s an old expression that “any publicity is good publicity,” Vance probably wants this embarrassing rumor to go away. Unfortunately for him, the subsequent fact-checks have extended its life, and the Trump-Vance campaign may soon have to deal with questions asking about it.

Even if the rumor does eventually go away, there are plenty of other negative stories about Vance that are backed up by facts. The Trump campaign has tried in vain to distance itself from the conservative playbook Project 2025, but Vance happened to write the foreword to a book by the plan’s lead author, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts. He is using his campaign speeches to praise Diet Mountain Dew, and he has a long record of criticizing Trump that is being unearthed every day. Plus, he has ties to tech moguls with disturbing ideas about reordering society.

After President Biden withdrew from the 2024 election and handed the reins to Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this week, the Trump campaign is reportedly second-guessing the decision to bring on Vance as Trump’s running mate. Embarrassing rumors certainly won’t quell these discussions within the campaign. Then again, there are several embarrassing stories of Trump that have been floating around for years.

The Kamala Harris campaign released its first promotional video Thursday morning, titled “We choose freedom.” And it highlights one of Donald Trump’s favorite photos: his mugshot.

Soundtracked to Beyoncé’s 2016 song “Freedom,” the campaign ad alternates between footage of Harris, her supporters, and B-roll footage, over which the vice president and 2024 candidate says, “In this election we each face a question: What kind of country do we want to live in?”

Cutting to footage of Trump and J.D. Vance, Harris’s voiceover continues, “There are some people who think we should be a country of chaos, of fear, of hate. But us, we choose something different. We choose freedom.”

It also mentions choosing “a future where … no one is above the law,” at which point the video cuts to Trump’s 2023 Fulton County Jail mug shot—an image the Trump campaign itself has used on its website and merchandise—as well as a flurry of news headlines, timed to the soundtrack’s percussion, about his recent 34 felony convictions.

The video emphasizes a number of other issues one can expect to be key points of Harris’s campaign, including reproductive freedom, gun violence, childhood poverty, and affordable health care.

The ad closes with Harris saying, “We believe in the promise of America, and we’re ready to fight for it. Because when we fight we win.” It echoes themes that Harris, who entered the 2024 race after Biden’s exit just earlier this week, introduced at her first rally on Wednesday, where she said the upcoming election is “a choice between freedom and chaos.”

Donald Trump appeared to confuse Vice President Kamala Harris and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley during a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Wednesday night.

At his first rally since President Joe Biden endorsed Harris for the candidacy, Trump attempted to give his “radical” new opponent his full attention—but he couldn’t seem to muster the specifics necessary to actually attack her policies.

At one point, he appeared to mix her up with another Indian female politician.

“And you know, they’re talking about, he was talking about, she was talking about re—lifting the retirement age,” Trump said. Only, that policy is not part of Harris’s platform. It was a part of Haley’s, though.

The former president worked his way through a few other strange moments onstage Wednesday. At one point, he appeared to forget the word “abortion,” and pivoted to audience participation.

“She’s also a total radical on a word called im-bo—you know this right? A word called what? Abortion,” Trump said.

And of course, the bit that needs no introduction: Trump once again gave a shout-out to his favorite serial killer, while claiming immigrants had entered the country from “prisons, jails, and insane asylums.”

“You know they go crazy when I say ‘the late great Hannibal Lecter.’ They say, ‘Why would he mention Hannibal Lecter, he must be cognitively in trouble,’” Trump said. “No. These are real stories. Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lamb.”

Donald Trump’s Republican allies are worried that he might be underestimating Vice President Kamala Harris.

According to a report from Rolling Stone, several Republicans, including two right-wing lawmakers, have reached out to the convicted felon and former president to warn him about internal GOP polls that show Harris could make key states that Trump needs a lot more difficult to win. They also told him that assurances from his team that Harris was a weak opponent were wrong and that racist and sexist attacks from the right wing could easily backfire.

The report cites three sources, one of whom told the magazine that “when Joe Biden was in the race, we were headed for a Trump landslide.”

“Now that it’s Kamala’s turn, there are some scenarios that make me nervous,” said the source, who has discussed the issue with Trump.

Before Biden withdrew from the 2024 election and endorsed Harris, Trump was ahead in national and battleground state polls, particularly after Biden’s poor debate performance. Since Biden’s announcement Sunday, though, Trump has raged on Truth Social and Harris has skyrocketed in popularity, raising record amounts of money. Trump’s supporters are openly panicking, making weak attempts at impeaching Harris in the House and resorting to racist attacks.

Will any of that work in the face of growing enthusiasm for Harris from young people? The boost to the Democrats’ flagging fortunes even has the Trump campaign wondering if J.D. Vance was the wrong choice to be Trump’s running mate. Harris already has hit Trump with some smart attacks in the last couple of days, and Trump seems to be scared of debating her. Harris’s next move would be to pick a good running mate of her own, preferably one who won’t alienate her base while still assuring swing voters.