It’s been a rough week for JD Vance. While half the internet was laughing at the unfounded rumor about his relationship with a couch, the vice presidential nominee was also getting digitally dragged for misogynistic comments he made in a 2021 Fox News appearance.
Earlier this week, celebrities, Swifties, and politicians on both sides of the aisle were calling out JD Vance for claiming Vice President Kamala Harris was one of 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.”
“I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States,” actress Jennifer Aniston reportedly wrote in an Instagram story on Wednesday, in which she also pointed to Vance’s hypocritical stance on reproductive rights. “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.” Aniston, who has been open about her own experiences with in vitro fertilization, was potentially referencing how Vance, alongside many other Republicans, voted against a bill to protect the procedure in February.
Late this week, the Ohio senator dug himself an even deeper hole when he apologized to cats and seemed to double down on his comments about women.
“Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment,” said Vance during an appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show, “I’ve got nothing against cats.” He added: “People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said. And the substance of what I said, I’m sorry, it’s true.”
Then another 2021 clip resurfaced of him blaming all his bad press on journalists who’re mostly “childless adults.” As Mother Jones‘s David Corn reported earlier this week:
When Vance dissed Harris as a “childless cat lady,” he was not speaking off the cuff. This runs deep for him. The right, as he sees it, has been outmaneuvered by the left on various fronts, and its only target of opportunity is the government.
To win that battle, conservatives must target Democrats as foes of the family.
Meanwhile, people have continued to mock Trump’s VP pick online with a nearly endless stream of memes referencing accomplished “cat ladies” with no children. We grabbed a few of our favorites for your own amusement:
Update, July 27, 2024: This post has been updated with an additional quote from Aniston’s Instagram story.