JD Vance
JD Vance (Photo: Shutterstock)

Ever since he was selected by Donald Trump to be his Vice Presidential running mate, things have not gone well for Ohio Senator JD Vance. He’s been criticized for lacking charisma, shunted off to give speeches at sparsely attended rallies, and slammed for his anti-abortionist views.

Until Trump selected him, Vance was little known on the national stage. Comments he made at political events or on podcasts rarely made headlines at the time he made them. Now they’re coming back to haunt him.

Vance has already taken flack for comments he made in 2021 in which he said Democrats were like a group of “miserable”, “childless cat ladies”.

He has since claimed these comments were taken out of context.

Now, a clip from a podcast interview from 2020 has gone viral. Vance was talking to Eric Weinstein on the Portal podcast. Vance mentioned that the mother of his wife, Usha, took a sabbatical from work as a biochemist to help care for their newborn son. The older woman moved in with the couple for a year.

“It makes him a much better human being,” Vance says of his son’s interaction with his grandparents.

Weinstein says that traditionally “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female in theory,” is to help raise children. Vance says “Yep.”

Weinstein goes on to suggest such hands-on help from a grandparent is perhaps a “weird, unadvertised feature of marrying an Indian woman.”

“Yeah,” Vance says again. “It’s in some ways the most transgressive thing I have ever done against the hyper neo-liberal approach to work and family.”

Vance spokesperson issues denial

As the re-surfaced comments blew up online, Vance’s team reacted with an angry denial about the “post-menopausal” comments.

“The media is dishonestly putting words in JD’s mouth—of course he does not agree with what the host said,” Vance’s spokeswoman, Taylor Van Kirk, told the Daily Beast.

“JD reacted to the first part of the host’s sentence, assuming he was going to say: ‘that’s the whole purpose of spending time with grandparents’. It’s a disgrace that the media is lying about JD instead of holding Kamala Harris accountable for her policies that caused sky high prices for groceries and everyday necessities, a disaster at the southern border, and a historic drug overdose epidemic.”

Hmmmm… as far as the internet was concerned Vance clearly appeared to be agreeing with the host. And it did not go down well.

“Normal things”

Although the podcast interview comes from 2020, Vance continues to raise eyebrows with his comments about women and their rights.

Yesterday he appeared on Fox News. Talking to Laura Ingraham, he dismissed concerns that some suburban women were choosing not to vote Republican over the issue of abortion rights. Vance said they were more concerned with “normal” things.

“ I don’t buy that, Laura. I think most suburban women care about the normal things that most Americans care about. Right? They care about inflation. They care about the price of groceries. They care about public safety in the streets where their kids play. Look, as Donald Trump has said, he wants the American people at the state level to decide abortion policy.”

Since Biden announced he was quitting, Kamala Harris has closed the gap in opinion polls with Donald Trump. Recent polls showed Harris narrowly ahead in three swing states.

Many political commentators say that women who were previously not enthused about voting for either Trump or Biden are now thinking about voting. In some states (such as Florida), abortion rights will also be on the ballot. This is again likely to bring out people more likely to vote for Harris.

Walz agrees to debate

In other Vance-related news, Governor Tim Walz yesterday agreed to a televised debate with Vance. CBS News invited both VP picks to a debate in New York City and offered them four potential dates (September 17, September 24, October 1, and October 8). Walz posted to social media that he’d be happy to debate on October 1.

Vance today responded, agreeing to debate on that date.

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