Manchin dismisses Vance’s childless Americans comments: ‘Very weird’

Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) took a swipe at Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) on Tuesday, calling his past comments about “childless cat ladies” “very weird,” as the vice presidential candidate faces backlash over his comments about people who do not have kids.

When asked about Vance’s controversial comments, the former Democrat said, “That truly is just a weird position to take. I’ve never heard that before. It was very weird. I couldn’t believe it.”

Manchin is the latest lawmaker to question Vance’s 2021 remarks, during which he criticized those who don’t have children.

In those remarks, Vance 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.”

Vance defended the “childless cat ladies” remarks last week, calling it a “sarcastic comment” and pivoting to attack Democrats as “antifamily.”

“I know the media wants to attack me and wants me to back down on this, Megyn, 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 on SiriusXM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show” last week.

The comments were resurfaced as the Ohio Republican comes under increased scrutiny since former President Trump announced Vance as his running mate.

Vance spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk pushed back against the criticism, arguing the the left-wing media have twisted 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. 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,” Van Kirk told The Hill.

He continued to take heat Tuesday for comments he made in a 2020 conservative podcast when he 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.”

Democrats, including likely Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Harris, have seized on Vance’s various remarks to make their case against the Trump-Vance ticket or label him as “weird.”

Vance told Fox News on Sunday his feelings are not hurt by the label.

And 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.”