Buttigieg hits Vance over ‘childless’ remarks

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg hit back at Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), tapped earlier this month to be former President Trump’s running mate, for remarks he made in the past about “childless” figures within the Democratic Party.

“The really sad thing is, he said that after Chasten [Buttigieg] and I had been through a fairly heartbreaking setback in our adoption journey,” Buttigieg, who now has twins, said Tuesday on CNN’s “The Source.”

“He couldn’t have known that, but maybe that’s why you shouldn’t be talking about other people’s children,” he told host Kaitlan Collins in the interview, highlighted by Mediaite.

In the older clip, which recently resurfaced, Vance pointed to prominent figures in the Democratic Party — including Buttigieg, Vice President Harris and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — saying that “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?” Vance said in the clip.

Harris has two stepchildren, Cole and Ella Emhoff, by way of her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

“And it’s not about his kids, or my kids, or the vice president’s family,” Buttigieg said Tuesday. “It’s about your family, people’s families whose well-being will depend on whether we go into a future led by somebody like Kamala Harris who is focused on expanding the prosperity, the freedom, the well-being of our families.”

He added, “Or, do you want your children to grow up in a country defined by a return to the chaos and recrimination and cruelty that was the hallmark of the Trump era?”

Buttigieg’s comments come after Harris stepped into the spotlight as the likely Democratic nominee for president, after President Biden announced Sunday that he was withdrawing from the race and endorsing the vice president in his place.

The Hill has reached out to Vance’s office and the Trump campaign.