Vance shrugs off criticisms over his sexist comments that have dragged down his favorability

Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance brushed off the onslaught of negative media coverage over his past misogynistic remarks — and once again stood by his “childless cat lady” comment.

Much of the media hysteria has focused on a resurfaced interview from 2021 in which Vance referred to Vice President Kamala Harris, who has two stepchildren, as a “childless cat lady.” The comment sparked the wrath of Harris allies, social media users, Jennifer Aniston and even Kerstin Emhoff — the ex-wife of second gentlemen Doug Emhoff.

Speaking to NBC News on Tuesday, Vance defended his past attack but clarified that he did not mean for it to include those having difficulty conceiving.

“What I was criticizing and continue to criticize is a particular neurosis in American leadership that I think leads people to say crazy things, like ‘You shouldn’t have children because climate change is a threat to the future,’” Vance said Tuesday.

“Climate change may very well be a problem, but it is not a problem that should motivate people to not have families. And I think that attitude is quite damaging. It’s quite destructive,” the Ohio Senator continued.

“I’ll keep on calling it out, even though I’m sure that Democrats will misrepresent what I say,” he added. “I just think that the substance of what I said is actually quite defensible.”

While the internet has condemned Vance’s “childless cat lady” comment, Vance’s former classmates have slammed his pivot from calling Trump “America’s Hitler” to becoming his running mate, and Democrats have labeled Vance as “weird” in the weeks since the first-term Ohio Senator joined the 2024 GOP ticket.

Despite shrugging off the offensive remarks, Vance boasts the lowest favorability rating of any VP pick immediately after the party convention since the 1980s, with a net negative favorability of -6 points, according to CNN.

He told the outlet that he didn’t think his highly scrutinized debut disappointed the former president.

The Ohio Republican also said he wasn’t surprised by the media frenzy: “I mean, I knew that when I came out of the gate there was going to be a couple of days of positive media coverage and then immediately they would go and attack me over everything that I had ever said in my life.”

“The price of entry of being on the national ticket and giving me an opportunity to govern is you have to ... take the shots, and so I sort of expected it,” Vance told NBC News. “I think that, frankly, the people who’ve made a lot of money and acquired a lot of power screwing the country up are not going to go easily.”

Although he said last week that he was “pissed off” that he wasn’t going to debate Harris, his opinions on the matter seem to have shifted. “I don’t really care,” he told the outlet. “My attitude is I have a job, but it’s to persuade as many people to vote for us as possible. And I’m going to have that same job whoever the Democrats nominate.”