Vance: 'Childless people' in US leadership 'more sociopathic'
Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) has made numerous comments over the years criticizing those without children, according to a new analysis of his previous statements from CNN’s KFILE.
Former President Trump's running mate continues to take heat over his 2021 “childless cat ladies” remark, which resurfaced in recent days. The investigations team found Vance has made comments targeting those who do not have children since 2020.
In a 2020 conservative podcast, Vance suggested “childless people” in the country’s leadership were “more sociopathic” than those with children.
“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 on the 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.”
Vice President Harris's campaign account also posted the clip of Vance remarks on social media platform X on Tuesday.
CNN pointed to other Vance posts on Twitter, now known as X, that targeted people without children.
In September 2021, he said the “cat ladies....must be stopped” in response to a report that found younger people are afraid to have children due to the climate crisis.
He also wrote in a separate tweet, "Our country’s low birth rates have made many elites sociopaths,” according to the analysis.
When reached for comment on the KFILE report, Vance spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk emphasized that the senator's past comments were directed toward Democrats and their policies.
"Once again, the leftwing media have twisted Senator Vance's words and spun up a false narrative about his position on the issues. As he has clearly stated, he was talking about politicians on the left who support policies that are explicitly anti-child and anti-family," Van Kirk told The Hill.
"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," she added.
Vance has been under fire in recent days after a 2021 clip from his interview with Tucker Carlson resurfaced. In it, he said the country was being run 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.”
“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,” Vance said. “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?”
Vance tried to defend his previous comments in an interview on SiriusXM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show” last week, saying those remarks about “childless cat ladies” were “sarcastic.” He then pivoted to attacking Democrats as “antifamily.”
“It’s not a criticism of people who don’t have children. I explicitly said in my remarks — despite the fact the media has lied about this — that this is not about criticizing people who for various reasons didn’t have kids,” Vance said. “This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming antifamily and antichildren.”
When asked about Vance's "childless" remarks by Fox News's Laura Ingraham, Trump said Monday that his running mate "likes family." He told Ingraham that Vance has “tremendous support,” and argued he does particularly well among “people that like families.”
The Hill has reached out to Vance’s campaign for comment.