Donald Trump revealed Wednesday that unlike his running mate, he’s just fine with childless cat ladies.
During his widely panned appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists’ convention, where he attacked his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris's race and ethnicity, Trump was asked about J.D. Vance’s now famous and much memed assertion. ABC News’ Rachel Scott quoted Vance as once saying Democrats were “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they have made.”
Did Trump know about this before he put Vance on the Republican presidential ticket, and does he agree with his potential future vice president, Scott asked.
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“I’m just speaking for myself,” the former president answered. “I think I’m speaking for him, too. He strongly believes in family. But I know people with great families. I know people with not great families, that don’t have a family, and the people without the family are far better. They’re superior in many cases, okay?”
There’s a lot to unpack here. Trump, a father of five children with three wives, said people who don’t have families—who don't have children—are “superior in many cases.”
Without stopping, he continued his defense of Vance. “He’s not saying they’re not. What he’s saying is that he thinks the family experience is a very important thing. It’s a very good thing," Trump said. "But that doesn’t mean that if you grow up and you grow old and you don’t meet somebody that would be wonderful to meet, it would’ve been good, that that’s a bad thing.”
Trump’s comments expanded on remarks he made to Fox News’ Laura Ingraham this week, when he said Vance just “feels family is good.”
On Wednesday, at the NABJ gathering in Chicago, Scott pressed Trump further on whether his campaign backed a proposal Vance once floated to allow parents to cast more ballots than voters without children.
“No, but it’s not something I’ve ever heard before,” he said, before pivoting to “illegal aliens” taking American jobs.
When Semafor’s Kadia Goba called attention to Vance’s opinions about “childless women like myself or divorced people like yourself” and asked if Republicans were getting too “judgy,” Trump quickly tried to paint Democrats as the radical ones.
“I think the Republican Party is actually much less—I think I’ve made them much less radical, perhaps,” Trump said.
Trump's comments belied an awareness of how the Ohio senator has come to be viewed by GOP election-watchers: as a liability.
The former president suggested Vance wouldn’t keep feline lovers or proud singles from supporting him in November. And he discounted Vance as a nothingburger.
"Historically, the choice of a vice president makes no difference,” he said. “You’re voting for the president. You can have a vice president who’s outstanding in every way—and I think JD is, I think that all of them would have been—but you’re not voting that way. You’re voting for the president. You’re voting for me. If you like me, I’m gonna win.”
