Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg took apart JD Vance’s lame attempt to justify his comments that the US is being run by a bunch of “childless cat ladies” during an interview on this Sunday’s State of the Union on CNN, proving once again that he’s one of the best surrogates the Democrats have out there.
Host Dana Bash asked Buttigieg if he wanted to respond to Vance’s comments during his interview which aired earlier on her show, where he lied that he supposedly didn’t “criticize people for not having kids” and claimed he criticized them for being “anti-child” instead.
“Well, I don’t know which part of that is worse, the lie that he just told when he says he never criticized people for not having kids, because, of course, he very much did, including Kamala Harris and me and a lot of other people, millions of Americans, in fact, who he disparaged as childless cat ladies,” Buttigieg replied. “And, look, I’m a dog guy with two kids, but I’m one of millions of Americans he managed to insult there.”
Buttigieg also whacked Vance for accusing “anybody who disagrees with him is anti-child.”
“He seems incapable of talking about a vision for this country in terms of lifting people up or building people up or helping people out,” Buttigieg continued, before noting that with Vance “It’s always disparagement, disparaging a fellow veteran’s military service.” Buttigieg then proceeded to take apart Vance, Trump and their fellow Republicans for their policies, which actually are anti-child and anti-family.
BUTTIGIEG: I’m pretty sure I caught in your interview him attacking Tim Walz for his — how he greeted his own wife after speaking, and now not saying we have a disagreement about policy, some reason why his ideas are better than our ideas for taking care of kids, but, rather, if you disagree with him, if you disagree with J.D. Vance, Donald Trump and Republicans’ agenda to dismantle the Department of Education or any of the other things they’re proposing to do, you’re not just disagreeing; you’re anti-child.
This is exactly the kind of politics that people are sick of. I think it’s why people feel a sense of exhaustion when they look back to what the Trump era was like and have very little interest and appetite in going back to that politics of disparagement and destruction and insult, when, right now, you have this incredible amount of joy and lift surrounding the Harris/Walz campaign that’s part of what accounts for the extraordinary momentum that we’re seeing as they tour the country.
BASH: What about this notion, beyond the disparaging remarks that you — what you say are disparaging remarks about the childless cat ladies, which we all heard, about the policies, about the fact that he — and this is something that he has been sort of entrenched in for several years, this sort of new conservative notion that your policies, your fellow Democrats’ policies don’t contribute to the pursuit of family in this country?
BUTTIGIEG: Well, first of all, let’s be clear.
We’re the ones trying to get the child tax credit expanded, and J.D. Vance couldn’t be bothered to show up in the Senate and vote for it, and Republicans have blocked that from being expanded, or it would be the law of the land right now.
So, if you want to talk about promoting children, promoting family, put your money where your mouth is. Same with a lot of other policies, like, I don’t know, paid family leave, something that Tim Walz delivered in Minnesota, something that the Biden/Harris administration sought to deliver for the American people.
Right now, Republicans are blocking it, but that’s something that they could certainly change their tune on, but they haven’t.
Project 2025 is full of things that, in my opinion, are bad for families. And, look, when you asked him and pressed him on whether my family was legitimate, he said yes because I think he kind of felt shamed into it.
But let’s remember also that, last time I checked, he doesn’t even think I should legally be able to have a family. Now, if you really got his way in his anti-marriage equality views, I don’t know if that means that he would want me and my husband to be forcibly divorced and separated from our children, or if he’d be satisfied just to have us lose legal protections, like the ability to do our taxes together or visit them in a hospital.
I don’t know exactly what his vision of us not having a family looks like, but I know that it’s not pro-family for me.
