Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance has been dogged with criticism ever since interviews resurfaced showing him blaming America’s ills on people without kids.
On Monday, his wife, Usha Vance, went on Fox News to defend her husband’s previous “cat lady” attacks, which she insisted came from a good place.
“He made a quip in service of making a point that he wanted to make that was substantive,” she said. “And I just wish sometimes that people would talk about those things and that we would spend a lot less time just sort of going through this three-word phrase or that three-word phrase, because what he was really saying is that it can be really hard to be a parent in this country.”
After Ainsley Earhardt pointed out that JD Vance’s cat lady comments offended a lot of people, Usha Vance insisted that her husband “would never, ever, ever want to say something to hurt someone who was trying to have a family who really, you know, was struggling with that.”
She added that she understood that ”there are a lot of other reasons why people may choose not to have families, and many of those reasons are very good.”
Usha Vance insisted that her husband’s criticisms of childless Americans are just his way of having a “real conversation” about “what can we do to make it easier to live in 2024, and live a very full life that isn’t just professional, that also has this kind of rich personal life and community behind it.”
You can see a clip of the interview below, courtesy of The Recount.
But while JD Vance probably appreciated his wife’s defense of his views, many people on X, formerly Twitter, critiqued her interview.