Senator JD Vance – pictured here with his wife Usha in the background at the Republican National Convention last month – has tried to correct his earlier comments, but in doing so he may have made things worse.Annabelle Gordon/CNP/ZUMA
On Sunday, Senator JD Vance (Republican of Ohio) said has been making the rounds on the morning shows, apparently trying to make amends for the chaos he caused with his past comments about “childless cat ladies” and abortion, among other issues, which have become topical again since former President Trump selected him as his running mate.
In interviews with ABC, CBS and CNN, Vance was asked about his stance on the issues, about Democrats calling him “weird” and about his opinion on some of Trump’s craziest statements, potentially stirring up even more controversy.
Here are some highlights of some of his most bizarre – and downright wrong – statements on Sunday morning:
Vance tried to portray Walz – who coined the label “weird” used by Democrats against Republicans – as the weird one because of the way he greeted his wife after his first rally with Harris in Philadelphia last week.
“Tim Walz gave his wife a nice, firm Midwestern-style handshake and then tried to correct that in a sort of awkward way,” Vance told CNN’s Dana Bash. “I think it’s two people, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, who are uncomfortable in their own skin because they’re uncomfortable with their policy positions with the American people.” Something tells us, though, that line won’t quite fly, given Trump and Vance’s extremely odd past (including Trump’s suggestion that an “injection” of disinfectant could cure the coronavirus and Vance’s calling daycare “class warfare against normal people”).
When ABC’s Jonathan Karl asked Vance how exactly a second Trump administration would implement the promised “mass deportations,” Vance explained it in frighteningly sober terms: “20 million people are here illegally. You start with what’s doable. You do that, and then you go to what’s doable from there. I think if you deport a lot of violent criminals and, frankly, make it harder to hire illegal workers, which undermines the wages of American workers, you go a long way toward solving the problem of illegal immigration.”
“There are 20 million people here illegally. You start with what is feasible. You do that, and then you move on to what is feasible from there.”
Later in the interview, he added: “I find it interesting that people are focused on how to deport 18 million people. Let’s start with one million.”
Vance said his earlier comments about allowing parents to vote on behalf of their children were merely a “thought experiment” because some Democrats are open to lowering the voting age to 16.
“I’m talking about a thought experiment here,” Vance told Karl. “And do I regret saying that? I regret that the media and the Kamala Harris campaign have, 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 all the children in this country the right to vote, but let’s give the parents of those children control over those votes.”)
Not only has Vance falsely suggested that abortion pills are unsafe—more than 100 scientific studies have confirmed that they are safe and effective, even when prescribed virtually and mailed to patients—but he has also lied about his past attempts to criminalize them.
As I previously reported, last year Vance signed a letter with more than 40 other Republican lawmakers demanding that the Justice Department use the more than 150-year-old Comstock Act — a 19th-century anti-obscenity law that prohibits the mailing of “any article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for the performance of an abortion or for any indecent or immoral use” — to shut down “all mail-in abortion operations” nationwide. That’s exactly what Project 2025, an initiative of dozens of conservative groups led by the Heritage Foundation, is calling for the Justice Department to do under the next conservative administration.
But when CBS’ Margaret Brennan asked Vance if he would try to push this bill through 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 make sure it’s safe.” That wasn’t what the letter said, and – again – abortion pills are safe. So don’t worry, JD!
Vance dismissed Fuentes – who dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022 and recently attacked Vance’s Indian-American wife Usha, whom he described as “a non-white wife” – as a “total loser.”
“Of course I distance myself from him,” Vance told Brennan after she asked if there was room for Fuentes in the MAGA movement and if Vance would distance himself from him.
But if you think Vance suddenly became sensible, he quickly proved otherwise when he began to disparage government welfare payments to black farmers, who have historically faced discrimination, as racist.
“If you ask me what I’m more concerned about, is it a person attacking me personally or is it a government policy that discriminates on the basis of race? That’s what really concerns me,” Vance said.
During his disastrous interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, Trump told the moderators: “Historically, the vice president has no influence on the election. I mean, virtually no influence.”
Vance seems to agree: “I think President Trump is actually right about that,” the candidate told Brennan. “I think most people are voting for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.”
In the ABC interview, Vance added to the same question: “I am absolutely certain that Donald Trump is confident in my abilities. I also think he is right when he says that politics are not that important in this matter.” Vance has good reason to hope so, as polls show that more than 40 percent of Americans have a negative opinion of him.
