J.D. Vance has lashed out at actress Jennifer Aniston, accusing her of a “disgusting” attack for commenting on his description of childless women as “cat ladies.”
Donald Trump’s running mate used an appearance on Megyn Kelly’s Sirius XM show on Saturday to offer a defense of the resurfaced 2021 comments from an interview with then-Fox host Tucker Carlson in which he referred to Democratic leaders including Vice President Kamala Harris as “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.”
He said at the time, “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made… It’s just a basic fact—you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC—the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.” Harris has two stepchildren with husband Doug Emhoff, and Buttigieg is now father of 1-year-old twins.
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The “cat ladies” slur had prompted Aniston to respond with a post on Instagram to her 50 million followers on Thursday. “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States. All I can say is… Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day.”
Aniston made this intervention on Thursday on her Instagram stories, prompting Vance to call her “disgusting” on Megyn Kelly’s Sirius XM show.
Jennifer Aniston/InstagramDuring his appearance Saturday, Vance went after Aniston unprompted by Kelly. “Hollywood celebrities say, ‘Oh, well, J.D. Vance, what if your daughter suffered fertility problems?’” he said.
“Well, first of all, that’s disgusting because my daughter is 2 years old.
“And second of all, if she had fertility problems, as I said in that speech, I would try everything I could to try to help her because I believe families and babies are a good thing.” He was referring to his address to the Republican National Convention.
The “childless cat ladies” comment has been a political gift to the Harris campaign, and underlines the large reservoir of material available to it from Vance’s years as a frequent guest on conservative shows. It has now put Vance at odds with one of the country’s most popular celebrities, who has been open about her struggle with fertility, which left her childless, and with a legion of fans.
Vance had tried to smooth over the comment, claiming it was “not a criticism of people who don’t have children.” He added, “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.” He had also called it “clearly sarcastic.”
The comments earned him a stinging rebuke Saturday from the ultra-conservative editorial board of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. In a strongly worded editorial, it compared Vance’s comments to Hillary Clinton’s infamous “basket of deplorables” dismissal in 2016 of half of Trump’s supporters. It slammed him for not apologizing, and said he would hurt Republican chances with female voters.
The editorial, which came the day after one warning that Harris could win in November, suggests that Murdoch himself is unhappy with both Vance and Trump. The editorial board is known to closely follow the thoughts of the Australian-born media mogul, 93, who formally handed full control of his empire to his eldest son Lachlan last year but remains intensely interested in the news.
