From “childless cat ladies” and migrants to whether he’ll accept the election results.
As the race for the White House remains locked in a dead heat, according to recent polling, Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance is making the media rounds.
In a new interview with New York Times journalist Lulu Garcia-Navarro released on Saturday, Vance defended his “childless cat ladies” comments and baseless claims about Haitian migrants eating pets, both of which caused a collective uproar. Then there’s the question of whether he’ll accept the election results, even if former President Donald Trump doesn’t win (Vance’s position is still not exactly clear).
In case you missed it, we broke down some of the biggest moments from that lengthy, and at times, tense interview.
Vance regrets his “childless cat ladies” remarks … well, kind of.
Vance sparked outrage over his comments about “childless cat ladies” that resurfaced in wake of becoming Trump’s vice presidential nominee. They originally stem from a Fox News interview in 2021 when the then-Senate candidate lamented how the country was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies,” including Vice President Kamala Harris. (For the record, Harris is a stepmother to two children with husband, Doug Emhoff.)
But in the Times interview, he said he regretted using that wording. “I think most people who probably have watched this have said something dumb — have said something that they wish they had put differently,” he said in the latest interview.
He nevertheless went on to defend the rationale behind his argument by claiming that the U.S. has become “pathologically anti-child.” When pressed, he traced this claim to the current political culture, pointing to “deranged” people who don’t want to have children over concerns about climate change.
“I think that is a bizarre way of thinking about the future,” he told the newspaper. “Not to have kids because of concerns over climate change? I think the more bizarre thing is our leadership, who encourages young women, and frankly young men, to think about it that way.”
He repeatedly refuses to acknowledge Trump’s defeat in 2020.
Vance was given five chances to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 election and he took none of them. The first time Garcia-Navarro asked directly if Trump lost the 2020 election, Vance deflected, saying he was “focused on the future.”
“There’s an obsession here with focusing on 2020,” Vance said in the interview. “I’m much more worried about what happened after 2020, which is a wide-open border, groceries that are unaffordable.”
When pressed again, Vance started complaining about how social media companies limited stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020, suggesting that it cost Trump “millions of votes.” He again raised the exact same issue when asked for a third and fourth time.
Then finally when Garcia-Navarro emphasized there was “no proof, legal or otherwise that Donald Trump did not lose the 2020 election,” Vance responded by accusing her of “repeating a slogan.” He also went on to say he “would have voted against certification” in 2020 if he’d been in Congress at the time, and hedged on whether he’ll accept the results this time around. “I, of course, believe that a peaceful transfer of power is going to make Donald Trump the next president of the United States,” he said.
Vance Stands by Springfield migrant claims.
Vance still doesn’t regret his role in helping spread baseless rumors about Haitian migrants abducting and eating cats and dogs, even though these claims lead to school closures and bomb threats.
When asked if this fallout was worth it, Vance responded by instead expressing frustration with local officials and their handling of the migrant crisis. “It is disgraceful that American leaders pretend they care about these migrants more than they care about the people they took an oath of office to actually look after,” the Ohio senator said.
But Vance maintained that he wasn’t referring to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican who has repeatedly debunked Vance’s claims. “I’m not talking about Mike DeWine right now,” he said. “By the way, he endorsed us.”
The Republican ticket has ramped up its rhetoric against immigration in recent weeks. During a rally in Aurora, Colorado, on Friday, Former President Trump repeated false claims that a Venezuelan gang had “conquered” Aurora, Colorado. Vance stood by Trump’s false claims, despite the city’s Republican mayor, Mike Coffman, warning that they were “grossly exaggerated.”
“Well, Martha, you just said the mayor said they were exaggerated,” he told ABC’s Martha Raddatz on Sunday. “That means there’s got to be some element of truth here.”
He offers conflicting answers about national abortion ban views.
Like Trump, it’s unclear where exactly Vance stands on abortion. When running for his Ohio Senate seat in 2022, he supported a national abortion ban without exceptions. But then, during the VP debate earlier this month, he tried to appear somewhat more moderate on the issue by admitting that his party needs to do a better job talking to women about the issue and said it should be left up to the states.
When pressed during his New York Times interview, Vance didn’t offer much more clarity and instead repeated his “pro-family” priorities.
“I think that we want to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word. We want to promote more people choosing life,” he said. “But I think that there has to be a balance here. A balance between states that are making their own abortion policies. Of course, California is going to have a different policy from Georgia, as we’ve already seen. And then at the federal government, promoting and increasing the optionality, the choices available, which is going to make it easier for women to choose life in the first place.”
Addressing abortion rights has been a massive challenge for Republicans, especially in the final weeks leading to November’s election. According to a new poll by the nonprofit KFF, 4 in 10 women under 30 say abortion is the most important issue behind their vote this November, which is almost twice as many who said so in June.
