- Sen. JD Vance's past inflammatory comments are coming back to haunt him.
- In 2021, Vance criticized Simone Biles' Olympic withdrawal and called Kamala Harris a "childless" cat lady.
Sen. JD Vance of Ohio said several inflammatory things in the past, and some of it's coming back to haunt him. After all, the spotlight's on Vance now ever since former President Donald Trump picked him as his running mate in July.
Some of these comments appear to have aged poorly. Here is a non-exhaustive list of them.
Criticizing the media for supporting Simone Biles
In 2021, he criticized the media for supporting America's sweetheart, Simone Biles, when she withdrew from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
Biles stepped back from the games, citing mental health concerns. She later stated in a podcast that she experienced a psychological condition called "twisties," a disconnect between the mind and the body that stops the body from performing stunts like twists.
On a Fox News "Outnumbered" episode from 2021, Vance said that the media had turned the news of Biles quitting the Olympic team "into this act of heroism."
"And I think it reflects pretty poorly on our therapeutic society that we try to praise people not for moments of strength, not for moments of heroism, but for their weakest moments," he said.
Remember when JD Vance called Simone Biles weak when she withdrew from the Tokyo Olympics?
— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) July 31, 2024
Why do these Republican men hate women so much?pic.twitter.com/WRClQiRe7k
Biles is now touted as the world's most celebrated gymnast, with eight Olympic medals and 30 World Championship medals to her name.
She led the US women's gymnastics team to a gold medal on Tuesday.
'Childless cat ladies'
The senator's snarky remark about Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democratic lawmakers has gone viral in the days since his VP nomination.
In 2021 in a Fox News interview, he said: "We are effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made."
JD Vance says women who haven’t given birth like Kamala Harris are “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives,” and have “no direct stake” in America. pic.twitter.com/3DJY3pQTGe
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 22, 2024
He specifically called out Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as part of that group.
The comment was not only inflammatory but also inaccurate — Harris has two stepchildren.
And people have hit back at Vance for that comment.
Harris' husband, Doug Emhoff, blasted Vance in a podcast with US Attorney Preet Bharara on Friday, saying it was a "stupid, uninformed" comment.
Buttigieg similarly called him out for his comments, especially one in which Vance said that people who don't have children don't have a "physical commitment" to the country's future. It's also notable that Buttigieg adopted twins with his husband Chasten — he announced their birth in August 2021.
"When I was deployed to Afghanistan, I didn't have kids back then, but I will tell you, especially when there was a rocket attack going on, my commitment to this country felt pretty physical," he said to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's daughter Christine Pelosi, and Nikki Fried, the former chair of the Florida Democratic Party, hosted a Zoom call in support of Harris on Tuesday, rallying pet lovers and self-proclaimed "cat ladies."
Saying that the US should to 'go to war' against the 'millennial feminist' ideology
Echoing his "childless cat ladies" comment, Vance said —also in 2021— that the country needs to "go to war against the anti-child ideology that exists in our country."
Citing a Twitter thread, he launched into a passionate rant about a "ridiculous effort by millennial feminist writers" to talk about why having kids was not a good thing.
He said these people, whom he called "sad, lonely, pathetic," also encouraged those who have children "to talk about why they regretted having children."
Unearthed video: JD Vance says he and Trump will “go to war against” childless people, who he calls “sad, lonely, and pathetic”: “They should feel like their life is inadequate” pic.twitter.com/dcLZ2wNxyd
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) July 31, 2024
In the same vein, Vance also said in a fundraising email in August 2021 that the country is "dominated by childless sociopaths."
He also floated a proposal to increase the tax rate for childless Americans.
Representatives for Vance did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.