Kamala Harris’s step-daughter has pushed back against JD Vance after a clip resurfaced of him calling the vice president one of the Democrats’ “childless cat ladies”.
The Republican nominee for vice president – picked by Donald Trump as his running mate earlier this month – attacked Ms Harris and other Democrats for being “a bunch of childless cat ladies… miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made” in a 2021 interview.
“It’s just a basic fact,” Mr Vance told Fox News at the time. “You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] – the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.
“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?” asked Mr Vance.
Ms Harris, 59, co-parents two stepchildren – Ella and Cole – with her husband Doug Emhoff.
Since the clip resurfaced, Mr Emhoff’s ex-wife Kerstin called the comments “baseless attacks” and told CNN the vice president is “loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present”.
Meanwhile, Ella shared Kerstin’s remarks on Instagram, posting: “How can you be ‘childless’ when you have cutie pie kids like Cole and I?”
She then praised her mum for speaking out, and said: “I love my three parents.”
A slew of celebrities including Jennifer Aniston also derided the Ohio senator for his remarks, with the Friends star saying she “truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States”.
She said on Instagram: “All I can say is… Mr Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day.
“I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”
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In 2022, Aniston revealed to Allure magazine that she had undergone IVF to try to have children when she was in her 30s and 40s, but the attempts did not result in any pregnancies.
Mr Vance, 39, was one of 46 Republican senators who opposed the Right to IVF Act in June, which would have made it a federal right to have access to IVF treatment.
The Harris campaign also hit back at Vance’s comments, saying “every single American has a stake in this country’s future”.
Ms Harris was not the only one about whom the comments were arguably inaccurate. Mr Buttigieg, the transport secretary, announced he and his husband adopted infant twins in September 2021, more than a month before Mr Vance made his comments.