Usha Vance Defends Husband’s ‘Childless Cat Ladies’ Claim as a ‘Quip’

Usha Vance, the wife of Senator JD Vance of Ohio, defended a 2021 claim by her husband that the United States was led by unhappy “childless cat ladies,” saying that his statement was a “quip.”

In a Fox News interview published Monday, Ms. Vance said her husband, who is Donald J. Trump’s running mate on the Republican presidential ticket, had been trying to make a “substantive” point through jest.

In July 2021, Mr. Vance told Tucker Carlson on Fox News that it was “just a basic fact” that the country was led 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.” Mr. Vance’s comments were met with bipartisan backlash last month when he began campaigning as Mr. Trump’s running mate.

Ms. Vance, in her interview, asserted that his “actual meaning” related to a defense of Americans who are struggling to have children.

“What he was really saying is that it can be really hard to be a parent in this country,” she said, an explanation that seemed to depart in focus from what Mr. Vance had said.

She urged people to carefully examine the context around her husband’s comments.

Mr. Vance, then a Senate candidate, did not explicitly refer to challenges facing Americans struggling to have children during the 2021 interview, which lasted five minutes. He said the people he was referring to were “obsessed with their jobs” and controlled by “D.C. and New York status games.”

Mr. Vance cited Vice President Kamala Harris, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, as examples of Democrats in leadership who did not have children.

Ms. Harris has a stepson and a stepdaughter. Kerstin Emhoff, the mother of Ms. Harris’s stepchildren, came to her defense last month. Mr. Buttigieg adopted two children in August 2021. (He has called Mr. Vance’s commentary “offensive to everybody in the country.”) Ms. Ocasio-Cortez does not have children. (She has not publicly commented on the senator’s claims, according to her spokeswoman.)

It was not clear that Mr. Vance was joking during the interview with Mr. Carlson. The senator, who was defending similar comments he had previously made, suggested that Americans who do not have children lack a “direct stake” in the future of the country.

In an interview last month on “The Megyn Kelly Show” on SiriusXM, Mr. Vance criticized several people who had denounced his comments, including the “Friends” actress Jennifer Aniston.

Mr. Vance, 40, and his wife have three children.

Ms. Vance, 38, said her husband “would never, ever, ever want to say something to hurt someone who is trying to have a family.”

“Let’s try to look at the real conversation that he’s trying to have and engage with it,” she said.

It was Ms. Vance’s first one-on-one interview broadcast on TV since her husband was selected as Mr. Trump’s running mate last month.

The Trump campaign did not immediately reply to questions about whether Mr. Vance had been joking during the 2021 interview or whether he had any further comment on it.

In an interview before an audience at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said of Mr. Vance: “He is very family-oriented. And he thinks family’s a great thing.”

Mr. Trump also downplayed the importance of his running mate.

“Historically, the vice president, in terms of the election, does not have any impact,” Mr. Trump said.