Usha Vance, wife of former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, defended her husband when pressed about resurfaced 2021 remarks he made about “childless cat ladies” leading the country, which came under widespread scrutiny last month.
In a taped interview that aired on “Fox and Friends” on Monday morning, she said her husband’s “quip” intended to convey that U.S. policies do not do enough to provide the support families need.
“He made a quip in service of making a point that he wanted to make that was substantive,” Usha Vance said. “And I just wish sometimes that people would talk about those things and that we would spend a lot less time just sort of going through this three-word phrase or that three-word phrase, because what he was really saying is that it can be really hard to be a parent in this country, and sometimes our policies are designed in a way that make it even harder.”
“And we should be asking ourselves, ‘Why is that true? What is it about our leadership and the way that they think about the world that makes it so hard sometimes for parents?’” she added.
Asked what she would say to the women who were offended by the “childless cat ladies” remark, Usha Vance said her husband would “never ever” want his comments “to hurt someone who is trying to have a family or is struggling with that,” and reiterated that he wants to foster a conversation about improving the lives of families.
“And I also understand there are a lot of other reasons why people may choose not to have families, and many of those reasons are very good,” she said. “I think what I would say is, let’s try to look at the real conversation that he’s trying to have and engage with it and understand for those of us who do have families — for the many of us who want to have families, and for whom it’s really hard — what can we do to make it better? What can we do to make it easier to live in 2024 and live a very full life that isn’t just professional, that also has this kind of rich personal life and community behind it.”
Vance had defended his “childless cat ladies” remark amid backlash over the comments, telling SiriusXM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show” that it was a “sarcastic comment” and blamed the media for “focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said.”
In his resurfaced comments, which he made on then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s show, Vance referred to Vice President Kamala Harris, currently the de facto Democratic presidential nominee, as one of the “childless cat ladies” who want to make the country “miserable.”
Asked how she handles negative press about her husband, Usha Vance acknowledged it has been difficult but it allowed her to grow “thick skin.”
“Sometimes I don’t see it all, and sometimes I do see it, and I look at and think, ‘Well, this is not the JD I know, this is not accurate,’” she said. “And other times, it might spawn discussions or thoughts about what we should do next or how we should live. But I think we’ve been doing this now for a little while, and I’ve gotten kind of accustomed to it and grown a bit of a thick skin to it, and so I just try to not let it affect the way that I live.”
Answering a question about how life has changed for their family since Trump announced Vance as his running mate, Usha Vance said she thinks that everyone has been doing well during this “adventure.”
“You know, obviously this is like nothing we’ve done before, and everyone’s just been really kind since we started this,” she said. “There have been so many people volunteering to help us, help us understand how to do everything. I can’t thank people enough for that.”
Usha Vance noted that having Secret Service detail is a “big change” and praised the agents who are assigned to their family.
“They’ve been amazing. They’ve really taught us an incredible amount over the last couple of weeks about how to live with a security detail and all of that,” she said. “But that certainly is a change. We have code names. Now, our kids had a lot of fun with that.”
Usha Vance said she and her husband have discussed keeping their children out of the press as much as possible, noting that they weren’t visible at the Republican National Convention last month and were instead doing some sightseeing in Milwaukee.
“But I think what we’re going to do is continue to keep them, let them have their lives as children, which I think they really deserve, and let them spend lots of time with their father,” she said. “And if that’s sometimes seen by other people, great, and if it’s other times private, great, but I don’t think we expect to make them a real feature of any of this.”
Usha Vance also praised the Secret Service detail who covered Trump during the assassination attempt on him at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last month, which she described as an “obviously terrible” and “incredibly shocking” incident.
“He had the Secret Service detail that was really looking out for him and was able to get off the stage and all of that,” she said. “So I mean, just seeing that was incredibly shocking I think for everyone.”
“From a personal perspective, I guess I try not to worry too much about that,” Usha Vance added. “We’ve been really lucky. The people who are here, they’re just amazing. And I don’t know how they do what they do, the Secret Service detail, so I just trust the fact that most people, the vast majority of people out there, would never think of doing anything like that.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
