Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance has acknowledged that his first few weeks as running mate of Donald Trump have been rough, but placed the blame squarely on the media.
Vance has had a remarkably poor reception as the GOP vice presidential nominee. Ordinarily, a major party’s vice presidential pick sees an uptick in their approval rating of about 19 points, on average, in polls after they’re announced. But Vance, who was relatively unknown when he was selected by Trump, saw his numbers go down by six points.
In an interview with NBC News this week, Vance acknowledged the dismal state of his candidacy, but suggested that it was the media’s fault.
“I knew that when I came out of the gate there was going to be a couple of days of positive media coverage and then immediately they would go and attack me over everything that I had ever said in my life,” Vance said.
Vance has downplayed and refused to apologize for many of his past offensive comments. He attempted to excuse statements he’s made about childless adults, for example, by claiming that he was merely criticizing a supposed “neurosis in American leadership” that led people across the U.S. to believe that issues like climate change should deter them from having kids.
“Climate change may very well be a problem, but it is not a problem that should motivate people to not have families,” Vance said.
But Vance’s statements from years ago were much more aggressive. Indeed, he has expressed incredible disdain for individuals who choose not to have children or to prioritize their careers, particularly women.
In a Federalist interview from May 2021 that resurfaced this week, Vance expressed contempt for childless adults, telling his followers that “we have to go to war against” whatever beliefs led them to decide not to have kids.
“If you put all of your life’s meaning into” a career or credential, Vance added, “you’re going to be a sad, lonely, pathetic person.”
People with children, Vance contended, “have actually built something more meaningful with their lives.” He then added that “we have to go to war against that ideology and the people behind it,” referring to people who choose not to have children.
These aren’t the only troubling comments by Vance that have resurfaced during this campaign. He has also railed against “childless cat ladies,” claiming that adults in the U.S. without children — again, with an emphasis on women — should have less political power than adults with kids and large families.
When confronted with those comments last month, Vance doubled down, claiming that his complaints were “true,” and calling on his far right supporters to “pray for those people.”
Vance has repeatedly made statements indicating that he believes women should be subservient to men. He has also expressed support for a nationwide abortion ban, and said that states, through federal legislation, should be allowed to restrict their residents from traveling elsewhere to get an abortion if their home state has a ban or severe restrictions on the procedure.
He has also peddled Christian nationalist and white nationalist sentiment, promoting a false, 1950s-esque vision of America that only existed for wealthy white people.
“When JD Vance talks about what this future looks like, where he wants women at home, he’s picturing white women,” said reproductive justice activist Renee Bracey Sherman, in an interview this week with Democracy Now. “He is very sure that he wants white women to be at home procreating, while the rest of us are laboring under capitalism.”
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