Vice presidential hopeful Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and ABC News anchor Jonathan Karl went back and forth over his past comments about “childless cat ladies,” as the Ohio Republican tried to clarify his previous suggestion that parents who go to the should have more power than adults who do not have children.
Vance has faced repeated backlash for 2021 remarks during which he told then-Fox News host Tucker Carlon that the country was being run 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.”
Putting the comment aside, Karl noted Vance was speaking with Carlson at the time to discuss a “policy proposal” involving “giving extra votes” to those with children.
Vance pushed back on the wording, stating it was not a policy proposal, but rather a “thought experiment.”
“Democrats said we should give children the right to vote — some Democrats had said, we’re going to give children the right to vote. But I said, well, if we’re gonna give the rights to the children, then we should actually just allow the parents to cast those votes. Right?” he said during an interview on “This Week.” “I trust a parent more with a decision like that than I do, say, a 14-year-old. So, it’s a thought experiment.”