Donald Trump's vice-presidential pick J.D. Vance is further to the right on several issues
JD Vance tries in vain to talk himself out of childless cat lady mess by calling comment a 'joke.' AFP

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance has apparently dug himself a new hole on his controversial "childless cat ladies" slam, dismissing it Sunday as merely a "joke."

He was asked on "Meet the Press" on CBS by host Kristen Welker if he "regrets" what he said in a vitriolic 2021 interview when he attacked Vice President Kamala Harris and other women without biological kids as childless cat ladies. Harris has two stepchildren.

"I have a lot of regrets, Kristen, but making a joke three years ago is not at the top ten of the list," Vance responded.

He also called the comment "sarcastic" and insisted Democrats somehow "willfully misinterpreted" the remark. People "took it the wrong way," he tried to explain.

Welker pressed him repeatedly if he had regrets. Vance said he only regretted that people didn't understand his criticism of women who choose not to have children. He did he apologize.

Welker pointed out that 22 million women in the U.S. from the ages of 20 to 40 don't have children.

Nearly half of all women in the nation have no children so the insult is likely not a smart political strategy. Vance's net favorability rating makes him the least popular vice presidential candidate in modern American history.

Vance in the past has insisted his comment was somehow taken "out of context."

But he also insensitively quipped in an interview last month with Megyn Fox: "I have nothing against cats," apparently just cat women. He added then: "The substance of what I said, Megyn, I'm sorry, it's true."

He has stuck with his controversial perspective demeaning women (he hasn't said anything about childless cat men) who don't have biological children. Strangely, he opposes IVF fertility treatments which could help couples conceive.

Earlier this month an audio interview surfaced of a 2020 interview in which Vance appears to agree with a podcast host who says that the "whole purpose of the postmenopausal female" is to help raise grandchildren, which sparked more ire.

Vance didn't sound like he was joking in the 2021 interview when he angrily complained: "We are effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too."

Read more