Sen. JD Vance—pictured with wife Usha in the background at the Republican National Convention last month—is trying to clean up his past comments. But he may have made things worse.Annabelle Gordon/CNP/ZUMA
On Sunday, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) made the rounds on the morning shows, seemingly trying to clean up the mess he has made from his past comments about “childless cat ladies” and abortion—among other topics—that have re-emerged since former President Trump named him as his running mate.
In interviews on ABC, CBS, and CNN, Vance fielded questions about his stances on the issues, Democrats’ labeling him as “weird,” and what he makes of some of Trump’s craziest statements. But in doing so, Vance may have generated even more controversy.
Here are some of the highlights of some of his most bizarre—and flat-out false—Sunday morning statements:
He criticized Tim Walz for…not kissing his wife?
Vance tried to cast Walz—who coined the “weird” label Democrats have been using against Republicans—as the weird one for how he greeted his wife following his first rally with Harris in Philadelphia this past week.
“Tim Walz gave his wife a nice, firm Midwestern handshake, and then tried to sort of awkwardly correct for it,” Vance told CNN’s Dana Bash. “I think what it is, is two people, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, who aren’t comfortable in their own skin, because they’re uncomfortable with their policy positions for the American people.” Something tells us, though, that line is not quite going to land in light of Trump’s and Vance’s extensively weird records (which includes Trump suggesting an “injection” of disinfectant could cure the coronavirus and Vance calling daycare “class war against normal people.”)
He described exactly how the Trump administration would enact its “mass deportation” plan
When Jonathan Karl of ABC asked Vance how, exactly, a second Trump administration would enact the “mass deportation” plan it has promised, Vance broke it down in chillingly clinical terms: “There are 20 million people here illegally. You start with what’s achievable. You do that, and then you go on to what’s achievable from there. I think that if you deport a lot of violent criminals and frankly, if you make it harder to hire illegal labor, which undercuts the wages of American workers, I think you go a lot of the way to solving the illegal immigration problem.”
“There are 20 million people here illegally. You start with what’s achievable. You do that, and then you go on to what’s achievable from there.”
Later in the interview, he added, “I think it’s interesting that people focus on, well, how do you deport 18 million people? Let’s start with 1 million.”
He tried to dismiss his past claims that parents should get more votes than non-parents
Vance said his prior comments about allowing parents to vote on behalf of their kids were simply a “thought experiment” in light of some Democrats being open to lowering the voting age to 16.
“I’m talking about a thought experiment here,” Vance told Karl. “And do I regret saying it? I regret that the media and the Kamala Harris campaign has frankly distorted what I said,” he said, adding that those people turned his comments “into a policy proposal that I never made.” (His original comments were: “Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of those children.”)
He falsely implied abortion pills are unsafe—and lied about his record trying to criminalize them
Not only did Vance falsely imply that abortion pills are unsafe—more than 100 scientific studies have confirmed they are safe and effective, including when they are prescribed virtually and mailed to patients—but he also lied about his record of trying to criminalize them.
As I previously reported, Vance signed onto a letter last year with more than 40 other Republican lawmakers demanding that the Department of Justice apply the more than 150-year-old Comstock Act—a 19th-century anti-obscenity law that bars the mailing of “every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use”—to “shut down all mail-order abortion operations” nationwide. That’s exactly what Project 2025, an initiative led by dozens of conservative groups and spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, has said the DOJ should do in the next conservative administration.
But when Margaret Brennan of CBS asked Vance if he would seek to enforce that law in a Trump administration, he tried to rewrite history: “What we said in that letter, Margaret, is that we want doctors to prescribe this stuff to ensure that it’s safe.” That’s not what the letter said, and—again—abortion pills are safe. So not to worry, JD!
He disavowed white supremacist Nick Fuentes…and tried to claim the government perpetuates ‘reverse racism’
Vance dismissed Fuentes—who dined at Mar-a-Lago with Trump in 2022 and more recently attacked Vance’s Indian-American wife, Usha, who he characterized as “a non-White wife”—as “a total loser.”
“Certainly I disavow him,” Vance told Brennan after she asked if there’s room for Fuentes in the MAGA movement and if Vance would disavow him.
But lest you think Vance was suddenly being reasonable, he quickly proved otherwise, proceeding to disparage federal benefits to Black farmers who have historically experienced discrimination as racist.
“If you ask me what I care more about, is it a person attacking me personally, or is it government policy that discriminates based on race? That’s what I really worry about,” Vance said.
He agrees with Trump that the VP does not matter all that much
At his disastrous interview at the National Association of Black Journalists’ Convention, Trump told the moderators, “Historically, the Vice President, in terms of the election, does not have any impact. I mean, virtually no impact.”
Vance seems to agree: “I think President Trump’s right about that, actually,” the candidate told Brennan. “I think most people are voting for Donald Trump or for Kamala Harris.”
In the ABC interview, when asked the same question, Vance added: “I absolutely am sure that Donald Trump is confident in my abilities. I also think that he’s right that the politics of this really don’t matter that much.” Vance certainly has incentive to hope so, considering polling shows more than 40 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of him.
