Fact-Check: Liberal Media Have a Field Day LYING About JD Vance’s Parenthood Comments

Curtis Houck
July 26th, 2024 2:26 PM
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In perfectly coordinated fashion this week, the liberal media have gone postal on GOP vice presidential nominee and Senator JD Vance (OH) for 2021 comments about the left being dominated by unhappy progressives who don’t have children.

Everyone in the liberal media have piled on, ranging from ABC, CBS, and NBC on their flagship morning and evening newscasts to major newspapers to the insufferable blogosphere.

Since they aren’t interested in the facts, we’ll start with him. Semafor’s Dave Weigel had a piece outlining what the left has been using to melt down over. It concerned a July 23, 2021 speech Vance made to the Intercollegiate Scholastic Institute (ISI) conference (click “expand”):

Three years ago, when his U.S. Senate campaign polled in single digits, Vance told a friendly crowd about an idea he’d been kicking around. Conservatives needed to “take aim” at “the childless left,” whose “rejection of the family” was undermining their country. No one in the “next gen of the Democratic Party” — Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — had biological children at the time.

“Why have we let the Democrat party become controlled by people who don’t have children?” he asked. “Why is this just a normal fact of American life, that the leaders of our country should be people who don’t have a personal and direct stake in it via their own offspring, via their own children and grandchildren?”

But here’s the important passage the left has left out from Vance’s speech; the left has ignored where Vance showed compassion for both those not able to and struggled to conceive (and how, as evidenced in a brief X thread by the great Kaylee McGhee White, Vance was right in terms of voting behavior):

[L]ook, a lot of people are unable to have kids for very complicated and important reasons. I know there are good friends of mine who have struggled to find the girl, to find the right guy, there are people of course for biological reasons, medical reasons that can’t have children. The target of these remarks is not them - it’s important to point that out. There have always been people like that, who even though they would like to have kids, are unable to have them. Let’s set them to the side.

Vance also said this on July 29, 2021 to Tucker Carlson (click “expand”):

[W]e’re effectively run in this country be it the Democrats it, be it our corporate oligarchs, 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.

And 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, and how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it? I just wanted to ask that question and propose that maybe if we want a healthy ruling class in this country, we should invest more, we should vote more, we should support more people who actually have kids because those are the people who ultimately have a more direct stake in the future of this country.

Tuesday’s CBS Evening News was the first mention on the broadcast networks with correspondent Robert Costa scolding Vance for having “long criticized Democrats...and often with scorn”.

Wednesday’s Today on NBC also picked up the ball for the Harris campaign. Chief White House correspondent Peter Alexander boasted of “old video of Mr. Trump’s running mate JD Vance...resurfacing, referring to Harris and other prominent Democrats as ‘the childless left.’”

 

 

On the same show a day later, Trump campaign correspondent Garrett Haake pushed the left’s preferred narrative by warning Vance made “past comments on parenthood” that’s drawn him into “the spotlight” and “backlash coming from...even Hollywood” with Jennifer Anniston weighing in (click “expand”):

HAAKE: It comes as the former President’s running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, is in the spotlight for some of his past comments on parenthood, including this speech in 2021.

VANCE [at ISI conference, 2021]: When you go to the polls in this country as a parent — [SCREEN WIPE] — you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids.

HAAKE: And this from the same year drawing the most attention, referring to Harris and other prominent Democrats.

VANCE [on FNC’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, 07/29/21]: We’re effectively run in this country — [SCREEN WIPE] — by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.

HAAKE: The backlash coming from the political world to even Hollywood. Jennifer Anniston posting she, “truly can’t believe the comments.” And now, Kirstin Emhoff, the ex-husband of Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, writing, “for over ten years, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I. She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective and always present.” 

The onslaught continued into late Thursday and even Friday morning. Tuesday’s World News Tonight featured nearly two minutes on it from ABC senior White House correspondent Selina Wang playing Harris press secretary by kvetching he “disparag[ed] Harris for not having children” and “suggesting that parents be given extra voters” (even though it was clearly a euphemism) (click “expand”):

WANG: But tonight, new scrutiny for Trump’s running mate. Ohio Senator JD Vance and his 2021 comments disparaging Harris for not having children.

VANCE: We’re effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, 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. And 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.

WANG: Tonight, actress Jennifer Aniston sharing Vance’s comments with her 44 million Instagram followers, writing: “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of the United States.” And the former wife of Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff coming to her defense, noting that Harris co-parents their two children. Kerstin Emhoff writing, For over ten years ,since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a coparent with Doug and I. She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.” Ella Emhoff adding, “how can you be childless when you have cutie pie kids like Cole and I. I love my three parents.” And tonight, the Harris campaign highlighting Vance’s statements suggesting that parents be given extra votes in elections.

VANCE: When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power. You should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids. Let’s face the consequences and the reality. If you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice. Doesn’t this mean that non-parents don’t have as much of a voice as parents? Doesn’t this mean that non-parents don’t have as much of a voice as parents? Doesn’t this mean that parents get a bigger say in how our democracy functions? Yes. Absolutely.

WANG: Tonight, Trump standing by Vance.

TRUMP [on FNC’s Fox & Friends, 07/25/24]: He’s for the worker. No, he’s great. He’s doing a great job and he’s been very well received.

At the same time, Alexander was on NBC Nightly News again reiterating (two days after it first was made into a manufactured scandal) that Vance was “facing new backlash” for his comments to Carlson. Yet again, Alexander held up Aniston’s Instagram post and a statement from Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s ex-wife.

Come Friday morning, Wang was on ABC’s Good Morning America again to bludgeon Vance with nearly identical meltdowns. This time, she added a new claim, noting Vance “call[ed] for people without children to be taxed more” in an interview with Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.

What did Vance actually say? He simply argued, “[i]f you are making $100,000, $400,000 a year and you’ve three kids, you should pay a different lower tax rate than if you are making the same amount of money and you don’t have any kids.”

Thanks to child tax credits and even a Biden administration promise to end child poverty, we can safely rate Wang’s meltdown as pants on fire.

Friday’s CBS Mornings had senior White House and campaign correspondent Ed O’Keefe play the Vance-Carlson appearance and even boasted of Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) pushing back as someone rumored to be in the running for Harris’s running mate.

But this ending from O’Keefe was embarrassing as he pretended old clips resurfacing were coincidental: “Notably, the video of Vance saying what he said about childless women resurfaced on what’s known as World IVF Day. And the Harris campaign sent out email fundraisers saying, ‘Happy IVF Day to everyone but JD Vance.’”

The newspapers weren’t great either. The Washington Post bemoaned in a piece headlined: “‘Childless cat ladies,’ Jennifer Aniston, and Swifties take on JD Vance”.

Here were some online headlines from The New York Times:

USA Today was also having a normal one being tools for the left. Here was just a sampling: 

How about the freaks over at The Daily Beast? They were definitely enthused:

Now that, dear readers, is what a coordinated media push looks like.

In a statement to NewsBusters, Vance spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk lambasted “the leftwing media” for “hav[ing] twisted Senator Vance’s words and spun up a false narrative about his position on the issues.”

“The Democrats are in complete disarray with the most unpopular Vice President in history as their party’s nominee. The only childlessness we should be talking about are the childless parents who lost their kids to the murderous thugs and deadly fentanyl coming across Kamala’s southern border,” he added.

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