Vance attacked “childless cat ladies” who lack “a direct stake” in the country during a 2021 Fox interview. Vance said during a July 29, 2021, interview on Carlson’s Fox News show that the United States is “effectively 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.” He added: “You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children, and 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?” [Media Matters, 7/26/21]

Vance was responding to criticism of his earlier speech on the need to “take aim” at the “childless left.” Five days before the Carlson interview, Vance said at the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute that the right needed to “take aim” at “the childless left.” Targeting Harris and other Democratic leaders, he asked: “Why have we let the Democrat party become controlled by people who don’t have children? Why is this just a normal fact of American life, that the leaders of our country should be people who don’t have a personal and direct stake in it via their own offspring, via their own children and grandchildren?” [Media Matters, 7/26/24; Semafor, 7/25/24]

Vance’s comments triggered a massive backlash when they resurfaced after he became the GOP’s vice presidential nominee. Vance drew criticism not only from Democrats but from prominent conservative women and nonpartisan figures including the actress Jennifer Aniston. [ABC News, 7/25/24]

Vance responded to the firestorm by falsely claiming he was taken out of context. Vance told Fox’s Trey Gowdy that “if you look at the full context of what I said, it's very clear the Democrats have tried to take this thing out of context and blow it out of proportion.” But Vance misled Gowdy’s audience about what he had said on Carlson’s program. [Media Matters, 7/29/24]

Vance on conservative podcast: Childless American leaders are “more sociopathic” than those with children, and they make the country “less mentally stable.” In a November 2020 interview, Vance said that “so many people, especially in America’s leadership class,” don’t have the “cadences of life” that come with having children, adding, “I worry that it makes people more sociopathic and ultimately our whole country a little bit less, less mentally stable.” He went on to say that the “most deranged” and “most psychotic” posters on Twitter “are people who don’t have kids at home.” [CNN.com, 7/30/24] 

Vance tweet: “Our country’s low birth rates have made many elites sociopaths.” [CNN.com, 7/30/24; Twitter/X, 3/21/21]

Vance to Sebastian Gorka: Kamala Harris is part of a “childless cabal of people who don't really care about the future.” On the July 12, 2021, edition of America First with Sebastian Gorka, Vance said: “Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, all of these people. It's like a party where the next generation of leaders, none of them have kids. … The entire Democrat Party is like this childless cabal of people who don't really care about the future.” [America First with Sebastian Gorka, 7/12/21]

Vance tweet: “Paul Krugman is one of many weird cat ladies who have too much power in our country.” [Twitter/X, 7/25/21]

Vance tweet: “We should give miserable, childless lefties less control over our country and its kids.” [Twitter/X, 7/27/21]

Vance on Fox: “If you want to experiment on somebody's kids, Kamala Harris, AOC, and so forth, have your own kids.” On the July 30, 2021, edition of Fox News Primetime, Vance said he was “sick of these bureaucrats experimenting on my children” by requiring kids to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and recommending masking in schools in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Vance added: “That's experimenting on our kids. If you want to experiment on somebody's kids, Kamala Harris, AOC, and so forth, have your own kids — lay off of mine.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 7/30/21]

Vance on Fox: Democrats are the party that “doesn’t have kids,” so they are “dominated by a bunch of sociopaths who don’t care about America’s children.” On the August 4, 2021, edition of Fox News Primetime, Vance said that Democrats “feel comfortable experimenting on children” because they are “increasingly the party in the movement that doesn't have kids.” He went on to say, “I think basically what we’ve done is that we’ve allowed the Democrats to become dominated by a bunch of sociopaths who don’t care about America’s children. And we just need to call it out.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 8/4/21]

Vance on Fox: The left “has effectively been taken over by a lot of childless people, by the AOCs of the world, the Kamala Harrises of the world.” On the August 8, 2021, edition of Fox’s The Next Revolution, Vance said that he supported giving parents extra votes to represent their children. He explained that this would counterbalance “the left,” which he said “has effectively been taken over by a lot of childless people, by the AOCs of the world, the Kamala Harrises of the world. Those people now run the agenda of the Democratic Party, and we’ve got to push back against that.” [Fox News, The Next Revolution, 8/8/24]

Vance campaign email: “We’ve allowed ourselves to be dominated by childless sociopaths” who “don’t have a direct stake in this country.” An August 2021 campaign email, written in Vance’s voice and obtained by CNN.com, highlighted “the serious issue of radical childless leaders in this country,” adding, “We can’t have people who don’t have a direct stake in this country making our most important decisions.” The email continued, “We’ve allowed ourselves to be dominated by childless sociopaths - they’re invested in NOTHING because they’re not invested in this country’s children.” [CNN.com, 7/30/24]

Vance campaign email: “Our country is basically run by childless Democrats” who “don’t have a direct stake in it.” A second Vance campaign email read, “Our country is basically run by childless Democrats who are miserable in their own lives and want to make the rest of the country miserable too… What I want to know is: why have we turned our country over to people who don’t have a direct stake in it?” [CNN.com, 7/30/24]

Vance tweet: “The cat ladies, man. They must be stopped.” Vance was responding to a poll which found a “significant percentage fear having children because of climate crisis.” [Twitter/X, 9/14/21] 

Vance on conservative podcast: Journalists are “miserable and unhappy” because their biological clocks have run out. On the September 20, 2021, edition of the Moment of Truth podcast, Vance attacked people “who can't have kids” because they “passed the biological period when it was possible” as “miserable” people who pursue “racial or gender equity” to give “their life meaning.” He also claimed that “a core part of what's wrong with journalism in America is that you have a group of people who are dealing with their own, like, psychotic breaks” because “one of the weird lies the elites have been told is “hat it's very easy to start a family when you're 45,” but “God says otherwise.” [American Moment, Moment of Truth, 9/20/21]

Vance on Breitbart: “The Kamala Harrises, they don't have kids” but “want to take our kids and brainwash them so that their ideas continue to exist in the next generation.” On the October 4, 2021, edition of Breitbart News Daily, Vance claimed that the left’s “next generation leaders,” including “the Kamala Harrises, they don't have kids. And so there's this weird way where they want to take our kids and brainwash them so that their ideas continue to exist in the next generation.” Vance added: “If you want to brainwash children, have your own kids to brainwash.” [Breitbart News, Breitbart News Daily, 10/4/21]

Update (7/31/24): This post has been updated with an additional example -- the headline number has also been updated to reflect the change.