JD Vance has stirred up a lot of emotions during his relatively short time in Washington. Originally an author and venture capitalist, he transitioned into the political arena in June 2021, announcing his candidacy for the Senate. Fast forward almost four years, and he’s now serving as the Vice President of the United States, a position he took up, balancing it with being a father of three.
Back in 2021, JD Vance made a comment during an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox that had quite a few people talking. He described Democrats as being led by “a bunch of childless cat ladies.”
The remark was seen as a jab at those not focused on starting families, causing quite a stir. Then, last year, another comment he made about his own kids—or, as he put it, his wife’s children—hit the headlines.
While his political journey has been brief, it’s been marked by notable success, seemingly drawing him naturally to politics. After he returned from serving in Iraq with the Marines, Vance took on the role of media relations officer within the Marine Corps public affairs unit in Cherry Point, North Carolina—a position often reserved for senior Marines, but an exception was made for him.
“The experience taught me a valuable lesson: That I could do it. I could work 20-hour days when I had to. I could speak clearly and confidently with TV cameras shoved in my face. I could stand in a room with majors, colonels, and generals and hold my own. I could do a captain’s job even when I feared I couldn’t,” Vance expressed in his book.
He honed his skills, and his dedication did not go unnoticed. Curt Keester, a Marine Corps veteran who worked alongside Vance, recalled a moment during Fleet Week in New York City when media approached them for comments.
Keester recounted, “As we’re standing there waiting, a broadcaster, a radio journalist, came up and started asking us questions, asked, ‘What are your thoughts?’ I gave what I considered to be a terrible answer,” to which JD responded with ease, impressing everyone with his eloquence on the spot. “He was a natural,” Keester remarked.
JD Vance – Journey to the White House
Vance pursued his education first at Ohio State and then at Yale Law School. His bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” led to new opportunities, including forming connections with investors like AOL co-founder Steve Chase.
Chase offered Vance a position at his firm, Revolution, focused on investing in Midwestern startups. JD would eventually start his own venture capital company in Cincinnati. However, in 2018, his path began shifting again.
By 2018, Vance was considered a potential candidate for the US Senate, though he declined to enter the race for family reasons. But by 2021, when Republican Rob Portman from Ohio announced he wouldn’t seek reelection, Vance seized the opportunity.
His decision to run led him to win the Republican primary in May 2022, securing just over 32 percent of the votes. However, the year before, he was already caught up in a media storm.
His 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson surfaced again last year, in which Vance criticized the US leadership, particularly targeting Democrats, corporate figures, and “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
JD Vance’s Controversial ‘Cat Ladies’ Remark
“It’s just a basic fact—you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC—the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” Vance pointed out.
“And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” he questioned.
These remarks attracted criticism, being perceived as an attack on women in the US. Years later, after becoming a Vice Presidential candidate, Vance revisited the topic, claiming his words were taken out of context. His wife, Usha Vance, also defended him in a Fox News interview, urging people to view the remark with a broader perspective.
“I took a moment to look and actually see what he had said and try to understand what the context was and all that,” she shared. “And the reality is he made a quip in service of making a point that he wanted to make that was substantive, and it had actual meaning.”
In the general election, Vance underperformed compared to other Ohio Republicans; however, he still won the Senate seat, defeating Democratic challenger Tim Ryan. Speculation suggests Donald Trump’s endorsement played a significant role, although their relationship hasn’t always been smooth.
JD Vance’s Past Criticism of Trump
In 2017, Vance exchanged messages on X (formerly Twitter) with a law school friend, expressing opposition to the Republican American Health Care Act and deeming Trump a “moral disaster.
