J.D. Vance Called Kamala Harris a Miserable, Childless Cat Lady in an Infuriating Resurfaced Interview

Here we go again: Conservatives’ favorite “insult”—calling a woman a “childless cat lady”—is trending on the internet.

Now that Vice President Kamala Harris is likely the next Democratic nominee for president, many are taking a look at what Trump’s running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, has said in the past about women, and especially female politicians who choose not to have biological children. Spoiler: it’s not great.

In a recently resurfaced quote from just three years ago, Vance told fellow far-right conservative Tucker Carlson, “We’re effectively run in this country via the Democrats…a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too…You have Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. How does that make any sense when we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t have a direct stake in it?” (This cat lady line wasn’t a one-time thing, either. He’d basically said the same during an earlier speech.)

So, a couple of things! First of all, you don’t need to have kids to care about the future of the country, and there are plenty of people with kids who are making terrible decisions for the country. But also, Pete and Chasten Buttigieg adopted fraternal twin babies in August 2021. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might have kids some day (if she wants to). Kamala Harris cares deeply for her two stepchildren, Cole and Ella, who affectionately call her “momala,” and it’s pretty rude to dismiss their relationship and her beloved family just because they aren’t related by blood.

(And not that it matters nearly as much, but none of the people he name-checked have cats. Like, I get that “cat lady” is a term more than a descriptor of one’s pets, but it just goes to show that when Vance calls female politicians miserable cat ladies, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, because they aren’t miserable, and they don’t have any cats. AOC has a dog.)