Breaking Down the Controversy Over J.D. Vance’s ‘Childless Cat Ladies’ Comment

Celebrities, Taylor Swift fans, and politicians have slammed Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance for comments he made in a 2021 interview that have recently resurfaced, when he said that the country is being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies.”

The controversy stems from a 2021 Fox News interview with Tucker Carlson, while Vance was running for the Ohio senate seat he later won. “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, who has a wife and three children, told Carlson. “How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

In the interview, Vance named Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as examples of “people without children” in the Democratic Party. Harris, who is now the likely Democratic presidential nominee after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race, has two stepchildren with her husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff. Buttigieg and his husband Chasten adopted twins soon after Vance’s interview aired in 2021.

As the interview clip resurfaced this week, many people shared their outrage over Vance’s comments. Actress Jennifer Aniston responded to the remarks on her Instagram story on Wednesday, writing, “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. I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too,” the actress continued.

Aniston has been vocal in the past about her fertility struggles and her experience with in vitro fertilization (IVF). IVF has become the latest frontier in the fight over reproductive rights, after an Alabama state supreme court ruling classified frozen embryos as children—a decision that infertility specialists and legal experts worried could have serious ramifications for the widely-used fertility treatment method. Vance has previously voted against a bill that would have expanded access to IVF and other fertility treatments. He supported a separate Republican-led bill that would have stripped states that prohibit IVF of Medicaid funding.

Vance defended his 2021 remarks on The Megyn Kelly Show on Friday, saying "obviously it was a sarcastic comment."

"I’ve got nothing against cats, I’ve got nothing against dogs," Vance told Kelly. "People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said... I'm sorry, it's true. It is true that we become anti-family. It is true that the left has become anti-child. It is simply true that it's become way too hard to raise a family."

When asked for comment on Thursday, Vance's press team referred TIME to a statement Donald Trump's campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X, which says, "As a new mom, my heart aches for women who are unable to bear children" and that Vance's "words are being taken out of context and unfairly attacked."

Leavitt's post also includes comments Vance made in a separate 2021 speech where he talked about childless people, where he said, "A lot of people are unable to have kids for very complicated and important reasons… There are people of course for biological reasons, medical reasons that can't have children. The target of these remarks is not them.”

Read More: Why Trump Chose J.D. Vance

While Swift herself hasn’t publicly addressed Vance’s "childless cat ladies" comments, her fans—known as “Swifties”—took to social media to condemn them. Swift, who isn’t married and doesn’t have children, has three cats—one of which she brought to the photoshoot for the cover of TIME when she was named the 2023 Person of the Year.

Several Swifties posted the TIME cover on TikTok in response to Vance’s remarks. One user posted the cover with Swift’s song, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?, playing in the background, writing, “What was it that JD Vance said about childless women with cats?”

“When it hits you that Taylor Swift is childless and has cats…” one person posted on X. “JD Vance really effed this one up. The armageddon is coming for him.”

“Hell hath no fury like a certain childless cat lady who has yet to endorse a presidential candidate,” another person posted on X.

Feminist writer Caitlin Moran joined the Swifties, saying in a post on X: “It’s bold, for someone seeking votes, to hone in on ‘childless cat ladies’ when the leader of Childless Cat Ladies is TAYLOR SWIFT.”

Harris’ family also jumped to the Vice President's defense. Kerstin Emhoff, the ex-wife of Doug Emhoff, called criticisms about Harris’ lack of biological children “baseless attacks.”

“For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I,” Emhoff said in a statement to CNN on Wednesday. “She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.”

Harris’s stepdaughter Ella Emhoff, 25, praised her mother’s statement on her Instagram story on Thursday, saying, “How can you be ‘childless’ when you have cutie pie kids like Cole and I.”

“I love my three parents,” she added.

Vice President Harris hasn't commented on Vance's remarks, and her campaign declined to comment.

Buttigieg addressed the issue in a CNN interview on Tuesday, saying that the comments came after he and his husband had been through “a fairly heartbreaking setback in our adoption journey."

“[Vance] couldn’t have known that, but maybe that’s why you shouldn’t be talking about other people’s children,” Buttigieg said. “It’s not about his kids, or my kids, or the Vice President’s family. It’s about your family. People’s families whose well-being will depend on whether we go into a future led by somebody like Kamala Harris who is focused on expanding the prosperity, the freedom, the well-being of our families.”