Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has hit back at Jennifer Aniston after the actress dragged his two-year-old daughter into their ongoing feud.
The spat has its roots in JD Vance's 2021 comments about "childless cat ladies" running the country, singling out Kamala Harris and others. Jennifer Aniston, who has spoken publicly about her own infertility struggles, shared a screenshot of the clip on Instagram and slammed Vance's remarks. In her post, the Friends star mentioned Vance's daughter, saying she hopes the child will be able to have children of her own one day and won't need to rely on IVF.
JD Vance responded to Aniston's comments on the Megyn Kelly Show, calling them "disgusting" and stating that his daughter is just "2 years old". "And second of all, if she had fertility problems, as I said in that speech, I would try everything I could to try to help her because I believe families and babies are a good thing," the Ohio Senator said.
Vance explained on the Megyn Kelly show that his "childless cat lady" remark was sarcastic and he had "nothing against cats." "People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said," he said.
He also pushed back against the criticism, arguing that it was a diversion from the core of his argument. "It's not a criticism of people who don't have children," Vance explained. "I explicitly said in my remarks that this is not about criticising people who, for various reasons, don't have kids. This is about criticising the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child."
In a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson, JD Vance criticised Democratic Party leaders, suggesting that their childlessness influences their policies and attitudes toward the country. Vance had described figures like Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as "miserable" and lacking a "direct stake" in the country's future due to their lack of children. He also said, "It's just a basic fact - you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC - the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children."
