Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, reiterated his characterization of Democrats as "anti-family," defended former President Donald J. Trump's abortion policies, and suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris is racist.
"I'm pro-family," he said on CNN. "I want us to have more families. And obviously sometimes it doesn't work out, sometimes for medical reasons, sometimes because you don't meet the right person. But the point is that our country has become anti-family in its public policy."
Vance, who has faced criticism for past remarks disparaging "childless cat ladies" and suggesting that parents "should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don't have kids," clarified that his disdain is for Democrats' policies, not their family structures. He also stated that his 2021 proposal to give children the right to vote, controlled by their parents, was a "thought experiment" that he didn't seriously intend.
He told ABC News of the idea of giving parents more votes through their children, "If it was a policy proposal, I would have made the policy proposal in my two years in the United States Senate."
Vance also expressed support for expanding the child tax credit and implementing protections against surprise medical bills for those who use out-of-network providers for childbirth.
"I've been a senator for two years. Have I proposed any legislation to that effect? Of course not," he added. "Sometimes people make remarks in response to something that somebody else has said. If it was a policy proposal, I would have made the policy proposal in my two years in the United States Senate."
In a 2021 interview on then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson's show, Vance referred to Harris as one of the "childless cat ladies" who want to make the country "miserable."
Vance suggested that Harris, who is Black and Indian American, was the real racist because the Biden administration — which he referred to as "the Harris administration" — created a program through the Inflation Reduction Act to compensate farmers whom the federal government had previously discriminated against. He noted that farmers of any ethnicity are eligible if they experienced discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion.
"I don't think you've seen anything like what we've seen from Kamala Harris when it comes to handing out government benefits based on people's immutable characteristics — the actual legal enshrinement of discrimination in this country," he said on CBS.
