Carville: Vance's cat lady comments will 'haunt him for a long time'

Democratic strategist James Carville suggested that criticism of his “not allowing women to have children” comments will be long-fought as Democrats blast his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), for his views on abortion and reproduction.

“J.D. Vance supports something called menstrual monitoring. Is there anything weirder than that?” Carville said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “The Beat.” “This whole organization is obsessed and obsessed with women’s reproductive decisions. It really is. And this whole catty-woman thing is going to haunt him for a long time.”

Vance has faced an onslaught of attacks from Democrats in 2021 after remarks he made criticizing people who don’t have children resurfaced.

In his remarks, Vance told then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the country was “run by childless, catty-cat women who are miserable about their lives and the choices they’ve made, and they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

Democrats have seized on the remarks and are trying to link it to Vance’s stance on abortion and women’s reproductive rights.

The Ohio Republican last week defended his “childless cat-loving women” comment, calling it a “sarcastic remark,” and used the topic to attack Democrats as “anti-family.”

Democrats also point to comments Vance made in July 2021 in which he suggested parents “should have more ability to voice their opinion” at the polls than people without children.

Carville joked that Vance “can rank votes by the number of children they have.”

“So this whole thing is incredibly strange and supposed to be characteristic of middle-class America,” he added.

Still, Democratic strategists suggested Vance’s resurfaced comments were “helping” Democrats.

“Obviously, I don’t think he’s going to get away with helping the Democrats,” Carville said. “And the vice president [Harris] The people she’s considering, I don’t know if that’s true or not, are all very capable, proven people, and none of them have changed one bit.”

Harris became the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination last week after President Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed her. She told reporters on Tuesday that she had not yet decided who her running mate would be.

“Trump must be seeing this and being furious because he has a primitive survival instinct. Things are not good between Don Jr. and Tucker. There’s condiments flying around Mar-a-Lago. If you lift your head you’ll get hit with a ketchup bottle,” Carville later joked, referencing an incident in 2020 when an angry Trump allegedly threw a plate of food, causing ketchup to dribble down the wall.

Caroline Leavitt, President Trump’s national spokeswoman,He tried to clarify Vance’s 2021 comments.Last week, they said they had been “taken out of context and unfairly attacked”.

In a video of Sen. Vance’s full 2021 remarks, the Ohio senator spoke about the challenges some people face when it comes to having children and said his comments were not about them.

“There are many people who cannot have children for very complex and serious reasons. Of course, there are people who cannot have children for biological or medical reasons. This statement is not directed at them,” Vance said at the time.

Taylor Van Kirk, a spokesman for Senator Vance, pushed back against the criticism, saying, “The left-wing media has misinterpreted Senator Vance’s statements and created a false narrative about where he stands on the issues.”

“As he made clear, he was talking about left-wing politicians who support policies that are clearly anti-child, anti-family. The media can obsess over that all they want, but he will never back down when it comes to advocating for policies that protect parental rights and encourage people to have more children,” Van Kirk told The Hill on Tuesday.