Maddow Blog | Vance’s rhetorical record on people without children gets even worse

It’s been about six weeks since Donald Trump nominated Senator JD Vance as his new running mate, and the Ohio Republican’s bid hasn’t exactly gone smoothly. In fact, there’s measurable evidence that much of the public simply doesn’t like the young senator — and his reputation hasn’t improved since he became a candidate for national office.

There are various explanations for Vance’s unpopularity, but it seems likely that his long-standing criticism of childless Americans has contributed to his problems. Unfortunately for Republicans, that criticism is getting longer and longer. NBC News reported:

“You know, so many of the leaders on the left – and I don’t want to take this personally – are people without children who are trying to brainwash the brains of our children,” Vance said at a forum in October 2021, about a year before he was first elected to office.

Referring to the AFT chairman, he added: “If she wants to brainwash children and destroy their minds, she should have some of it herself and leave ours the hell alone.”

Such ugly language would be controversial in itself, but the totality of his achievements to date makes it much worse.

As we’ve discussed, Vance appeared on Fox News during his first campaign to diagnose a crisis he believes is plaguing the United States. The country, Vance told a national television audience, is “run by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are unhappy with their own lives and the choices they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country unhappy. That’s just a basic fact.”

In his social condemnation, the future senator particularly included Vice President Kamala Harris, who has stepchildren but no biological children of her own.

In addition, CNN uncovered similar comments from November 2020, when Vance said on a podcast that childless Americans, especially those in the country’s “leadership class,” are “more sociopathic” than those with children and make the country “less mentally stable.” The Republican went on to say that in his experience, the most “mental” and “psychotic” people he sees on social media are also typically childless.

But we can go further. Media Matters, for example, uncovered several other Fox interviews in which Vance denounced “childless” Democrats. Media Matters also found an interview with Breitbart News in which the Ohioan claimed that the left’s “next generation leaders,” including “the Kamala Harrises, don’t have children. And so they want to brainwash our children in some weird way so that their ideas live on into the next generation.”

Recently, there has also been extensive coverage of Vance’s proposal that parents should have more voting rights than Americans without children, and the federal tax policy should “punish” those without children for their “bad” decisions.

Meanwhile, Mother Jones’ David Corn uncovered a speech in which Vance said he receives unflattering media coverage because he considers most journalists to be “childless adults.” HuffPost included its own report highlighting the Republican senator’s 2021 comments. He spoke of the need to “fight the notion” that women can choose not to have children, suggesting that someone who focuses on building their career rather than having children is “a sad, lonely, pathetic person.”

About a month ago, Trump told Fox News he would urge voters who are worried about Vance to “listen to what he says.” The problem, of course, is that when people listen to Vance’s words, his problems only get worse.

This post updates our Related previous reporting.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com.