J.D. Vance got a grim warning from Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade as he tried to dig himself out of a hole over his “childless cat ladies” remarks.
Vance (R-OH) has been doing the rounds of Fox shows hoping for friendly faces to help him explain his comments that backfired with attacks from actress Jennifer Aniston and others enraged by his suggestion that women without children aren’t invested in the future of the country.
Kilmeade tried to defend Vance, but he told Donald Trump’s 2024 election running mate that “when you’re explaining, you’re probably losing.”
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He said that Vance’s attempts to reframe his argument were leading him down a difficult path.
The Fox & Friends star was referring particularly to an interview Vance gave with another Fox News presenter, Trey Gowdy, who took the would-be VP to task on Sunday for his remarks in a monologue leading into their discussion.
Kilmeade said Gowdy brought up a story about two nuns he met at an airport. “Greatest Americans who love America. What about George Washington? Never had any kids. Does that make him a bad American?”
Referring to Vance, he continued: “And he went ahead and said, no, there’s people that try to have kids or don’t want to have kids and are great Americans. So, he wants to explain himself. The question is, when you’re explaining, you’re usually losing, and that’s all they want is him to sit there the whole time and explain the comments.”
“He does a lot of interviews, a lot of podcasts, did a lot of publicity for Hillbilly Elegy, for the movie and for the book. So, they’re going to be pulling up all of this.”
In his monologue, Gowdy said he met the nuns after a storm hit Reagan National Airport and they were all trying to catch flights. “They’re Catholic nuns,” he said. “Not childless, dedicated to God. Love this country, living lives of service to others. And it’s not just Catholic nuns. Some of the finest people I know don’t have children, teachers and guidance counselors and lawyers and doctors,” he added.
“And they love other people’s children enough to teach and guide and protect and minister to them. Some people choose not to have children. Others desperately want them, but they can’t.”
Gowdy said he’d been contacted by many people who were “disappointed” by Vance’s resurfaced comments, made on Tucker Carlson’s now-canceled show, in which he said: “We’re effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, 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 claims the left has “radically taken my comments out of context.”
In Megyn Kelly’s SiriusXM show on Friday, Vance doubled down on his claims, saying: “It’s not a criticism of people who don’t have children. I explicitly said in my remarks, despite the fact that the media has lied about this, that this is not about criticizing people who for various reasons didn’t have kids, this is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.”
