Trump on Vance’s ‘childless’ comments: ‘He likes family’

Former President Trump on Monday offered cover for his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), as Vance faces a firestorm over his past comments mocking “childless cat ladies.”

Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that Vance has “tremendous support,” and argued he does particularly well among “people that like families.”

“He made a certain statement having to do with families. That doesn’t mean that people that aren’t a member of a big and beautiful family with 400 children around and everything else, it doesn’t mean that a person doesn’t have — he’s not against anything. But he loves family. It’s very important to him,” Trump said of Vance.

Trump was asked what his message was to women watching who might not have kids of their own.

“I think they understand it,” Trump said. “The Democrats are good at spinning things differently from what they are. All he said is — for him, he likes family. I think a lot of people like family. And sometimes it doesn’t work out … you don’t meet the right person or you don’t meet any person, but you’re just as good, in many cases a lot better than a person … in a family situation. But they took it and they spun it differently.”

Vance has come under fire in recent days because of comments he made in 2021 when he was campaigning for an Ohio Senate seat. He told then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson 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.”

In a separate 2021 speech at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Vance said his remarks were not targeting those who couldn’t have kids for biological or medical reasons.

Vance has defended the remarks in recent media appearances, claiming he was taken out of context and attacking Democrats as “anti-family” and “anti-child.”

“I know the media wants to attack me and wants me to back down on this … but the simple point that I made is that having children, becoming a father, becoming a mother, I really do think it changes your perspective in a pretty profound way,” Vance said last Friday on SiriusXM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show.”

Trump named Vance as his running mate earlier this month, tapping the first-term senator and staunch Trump ally to join the GOP ticket. Vance has significant donor connections and his allies argue he connects well with working-class voters.

But skeptics, including some Republicans, have questioned whether Vance was the best choice, pointing to his early messaging stumbles and expressing skepticism about his ability to expand Trump’s coalition.