J.D. Vance’s Plot to Make Life Harder for “Childless Cat Ladies”

J.D. Vance’s policy stances are becoming known to the public ever since Donald Trump chose the Ohio senator as his running mate, and they match up with his remarks calling Democrats “childless cat ladies.”

A 2021 interview on the Charlie Kirk Show podcast has resurfaced where Vance advocates for higher taxes on Americans without children. Vance proposed the idea during a discussion on how Republicans could take some conservative ideas from “unthinkable” to acceptable.

At the time, Vance, who had not yet announced his campaign for the Senate in Ohio, suggested that the United States “reward the things that we think are good” and “punish the things that we think are bad” before he suggested his tax idea.

“So, you talk about tax policy; let’s tax the things that are bad and not tax the things that are good,” Vance said. “If you are making $100,000, $400,000 a year and you’ve got three kids, you should pay a different, lower tax rate than if you are making the same amount of money and you don’t have any kids. It’s that simple.”

The interview has disappeared from Kirk’s YouTube channel and his podcast’s Rumble account, but ABC News obtained a copy of the video.

Also, the Harris campaign posted a 2022 speech on Thursday where Vance suggested that parents should have greater voting rights than people without children.

“Doesn’t this mean that nonparents don’t have as much of a voice as parents? Yes. Absolutely,” Vance said to applause from the crowd at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a nonprofit that promotes conservative ideas on college campuses.

Vance has recently taken heavy criticism from lawmakers and celebrities alike for calling Democrats “childless cat ladies” in a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson. These latest revelations indicate that it wasn’t a throwaway remark but something that the Republican vice presidential nominee has actively thought about—and it won’t endear him to the wider electorate beyond the MAGA faithful. It’s little wonder that the GOP is having misgivings about Vance as Trump’s running mate.

Anthony Scaramucci, who set the record for shortest time served in the Trump administration, predicted on CNN Thursday that J.D. Vance won’t last much longer on the Republican ticket.

Scaramucci foretold that Trump’s 2024 campaign obituaries will consider Trump choosing Vance over a more moderate pick, namely Nikki Haley, a misstep. “He could have appealed to a broader base of people, to women, to more independents. But he didn’t. He went hard MAGA, he went with a strange guy that’s very dull on stage, and you know, Trump hates that,” Scaramucci said.

Scaramucci, as he told the CNN host, knows a thing or two about short-lived relationships with the former president. In 2017, he served as White House communications director but was fired from that role by then-President Trump after only 11 days.

His astonishingly short stint in the Trump camp led to the popularization of “Mooch,” a “nonscientific term for a unit of time equal to 11 days, the length of Scaramucci’s White House employment,” per The Atlantic. First coined by Trump White House aides, the eponymous unit has since been embraced by Scaramucci himself, who found it particularly useful to predict the timing of Vance’s removal from the Trump ticket, which he considers all but inevitable.

Asked if he thought Vance would be replaced, Scaramucci replied, “I’ve had that experience with Donald Trump. I do think he could. It’s just a question of how many Scaramuccis J.D. is going to last.”

Scaramucci is not the only one making such predictions. While the Trump campaign insists it has no intention of booting Vance, there has been growing speculation in recent days that he is not long for the V.P. slot.

The vice presidential nominee made headlines yesterday for his remarkably poor performance in polls. Citing one from CNN, Business Insider reported that Vance is “the least-liked vice-presidential candidate since 1980.”

Donald Trump’s newest lame excuse for not debating Kamala Harris just evaporated in a matter of hours.

In a statement released Thursday night, Trump’s campaign explained that they would be putting any future presidential debates on hold.

“Given the continued political chaos surrounding Crooked Joe Biden and the Democrat Party, general election debate details cannot be finalized until Democrats formally decide on their nominee,” said Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung.

In the days following President Joe Biden’s endorsement of Harris, Trump took to Truth Social to air his grievances over the upcoming debate, scheduled for September 10. He seemed to be complaining about the debate’s host, ABC News, to create a context for skipping it all together.

Now Trump has offered a slightly different excuse. Despite the fact that Harris has become the party’s presumptive nominee, officially gaining enough support to snag the nomination next month, the Trump team was still unwilling to move forward with the next debate while Harris lacked support from one specific person.

“There is a strong sense by many in the Democrat party—namely Barack Hussein Obama—that Kamala Harris is a Marxist fraud who cannot beat President Trump, and they are still holding out for someone ‘better,’” said Cheung. “Therefore, it would be inappropriate to schedule things with Harris because Democrats very well could still change their minds.”

Harris responded in a post on X (formerly Twitter) by resharing a report about Trump backing out of the debates. “What happened to ‘any time, any place’?” she wrote.

But Trump’s scheme to sidestep debating his new opponent fell flat by Friday morning, when Harris shared a video of her speaking to Obama and his wife, Michelle, on the phone.

“We called to say Michelle and I couldn’t be prouder to endorse you and to do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office,” said the former president.

Harris thanked them both for their friendship and their support, and promised, “We’re going to have some fun with this too, aren’t we?”

Despite Trump’s repeated attempts to avoid going head-to-head with Harris, she has continued to push for a debate on September 10. “Voters deserve to see the split screen that exists on a debate stage,” she wrote in a post on X Thursday. “I’m ready. So let’s go.”

Donald Trump is seriously pissed that FBI Director Christopher Wray is asking questions about what really happened during the attempted assassination of the former president.

While appearing before the House Judiciary Committee Thursday, Wray testified about the agency’s ongoing investigation into the deadly shooting at a Trump rally almost two weeks ago. Wray said it was still unclear what had caused the injury Trump suffered to his ear, whether a bullet or a piece of shrapnel from a teleprompter.

Trump, who began claiming within hours of the attack that he’d been struck by a bullet, didn’t like that one bit. He said as much in a rant on Truth Social Thursday night, which took aim at Wray (whom Trump appointed) specifically.

“FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress yesterday that he wasn’t sure if I was hit by shrapnel, glass, or a bullet (the FBI never even checked!), but he was sure that Crooked Joe Biden was physically and cognitively ‘uneventful’—Wrong!” Trump wrote.

“That’s why he knows nothing about the terrorists and other criminals pouring into our Country at record levels. His only focus is destroying J6 Patriots, Raiding Mar-a-Lago, and saving Radical Left Lunatics, like the ones now in D.C. burning American flags and spray painting over our great National Monuments—with zero retribution,” Trump continued.

In the nearly two weeks since the attack, Trump’s team has not released an official medical report on Trump’s injury, only a memo from Trump’s former White House physician, Texas Representative Ronny Jackson. Still, Trump has continued to double down on his claims that it had been a bullet that grazed his ear.

“No, it was, unfortunately, a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard. There was no glass, there was no shrapnel. The hospital called it a ‘bullet wound to the ear,’ and that is what it was. No wonder the once storied FBI has lost the confidence of America!” Trump wrote Thursday.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is fighting back against Donald Trump’s move to throw out his hush-money convictions.

After the Supreme Court ruled that presidents have immunity for “official acts” last month, Trump asked the state of New York to throw out his 34 felony convictions. Bragg’s office replied with a legal filing of its own asking the state to reject Trump’s bid, arguing that even if official acts were excluded, they were “only a sliver of the mountains of testimony and documentary proof” the jury saw before voting to convict Trump.

The filing, made public Thursday, stated that the evidence Trump’s lawyers are challenging isn’t protected, citing a footnote in the Supreme Court’s ruling that includes a “public records exception” for introducing evidence from protected official acts. Even if protected evidence was introduced, “any error was harmless in light of other overwhelming evidence of defendant’s guilt.”

“The Supreme Court has long recognized that a President can act in an unofficial, personal capacity,” the filing, written by Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo, states. “Nothing in the Court’s recent immunity decision changes that basic fact.… This case involved evidence of defendant’s personal conduct, not his official acts.”

In May, Trump was convicted of falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime in the first degree by using his former fixer Michael Cohen to sweep an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels under the rug before the 2016 presidential election. He has long alleged that the case, along with his other criminal and civil cases, is part of a plot against him by those opposed to his presidency.

Judge Juan Merchan is expected to rule on Trump’s immunity in early September. If he rules in favor of the district attorney’s office, sentencing for Trump’s conviction will take place on September 18, possibly leading to the first prison sentence ever for a former president.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thinks Elon Musk shouldn’t throw stones in a glass house.

When Ocasio-Cortez pointed out Wednesday that the more than 100 empty seats in Congress were being filled by nonmembers “in order to project the appearance of full attendance and support” at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech, Musk took it upon himself to attack the politician.

Musk must have been feeling personally offended, as he was one of those butts in seats, having been personally invited to Capitol Hill by Netanyahu.

“The Democratic Party has become openly & boldly antisemitic,” he replied to Ocasio-Cortez.

Ocasio-Cortez was quick to point out that Musk should probably be careful with accusations of antisemitism, considering his repeated enabling of antisemites on his social media platform. She posted a screenshot of a Wall Street Journal article about Musk agreeing with a post last year stating that Jewish people hold a “dialectical hatred” of white people.

“Hmm 🤔 sometimes being quiet is free and good for you,” Ocasio-Cortez responded.

At the time of the incident last year, the Anti-Defamation League said Musk was using his “influence to validate and promote antisemitic theories.”

In response, Musk doubled down. “I am deeply offended by ADL’s messaging and any other groups who push de facto anti-white racism or anti-Asian racism or racism of any kind,” he said. “I’m sick of it. Stop now.”

Similarly, even after getting embarrassed by Ocasio-Cortez, Musk continued to post about it late into the night. “People who have been lifelong Democrats refuse to accept the clear reality that the Democratic Party is rapidly become openly antisemitic,” Musk wrote. “This trend is accelerating, not slowing down.”

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz called out Senator J.D. Vance for calling Democrats “childless cat ladies” on MSNBC Wednesday night, saying he doesn’t “think it will work” for one big reason.

“My God, they went after ‘cat people,’ good luck with that! Turn on the internet and see what cat people do when you go after ’em,” Walz said, drawing laughter from The 11th Hour’s Stephanie Ruhle. “It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.”

Walz has been discussed as a potential running mate for Vice President Kamala Harris, and endearing himself to cat people is a surefire way to help his chances. He’s not wrong when he talks about the power of cat people on the internet, and he would know: He and his family own an orange and white cat named Honey.

Vance has also been criticized by Democratic lawmakers and even celebrities like Jennifer Aniston, putting him in the internet’s doghouse as Harris’s popularity continues to spawn memes about coconut trees and Charli XCX’s album “Brat.” 

Walz, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, and Senator Mark Kelly are among the many names being discussed as vice presidential candidates. Walz already made a successful appearance on Fox News Tuesday morning, angering Donald Trump. If he keeps landing blows like this against Vance and Trump, he might quickly become the internet’s favorite for V.P., if not Harris’s.

Elon Musk just declared he’d fight Mark Zuckerberg “any place, any time, any rules.” Déjà vu much?

While Musk was at Capitol Hill on Wednesday as a guest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an ABC News reporter asked him if he was still considering fighting the Meta CEO.

Last year, the two tech billionaires floated the idea of a televised fight after Musk tweeted that he would be “up for a cage fight” against Zuckerberg. “I have this great move that I call ‘The Walrus,’ where I just lie on top of my opponent & do nothing,” said Musk at the time.

Zuckerberg, on the other hand, is trained in Brazilian jiujitsu.

The cage fight served as a strange proxy for the feuding tech bosses’ social media companies and additionally distracted from Musk’s billion-dollar losses that year across his portfolio.

After going back and forth for more than a month, determining location and hyping up the event in August, Zuckerberg suddenly said it was “time to move on” from the cage fight idea.

Zuckerberg still seems over the fight idea. “Are we really doing this again?” he wrote Wednesday on Threads, Meta’s response to X (formerly Twitter), in response to a post about Musk’s comment.

Zuckerberg’s disinterested tone is probably representative of how most Americans feel about the fight.

Recently, Musk and Zuckerberg have both spent their free time sucking up to presidential candidate Donald Trump. Musk reportedly pledged to donate $45 million a month to Trump’s campaign, a promise he is now trying to walk back. Zuckerberg said he thought Trump was “badass” when he raised his fist after a bullet grazed his ear.

With these tech billionaires meddling in politics, it begs the question: Can you really fight if you’re on the same team?

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear issued a heartfelt apology Thursday after going “over the line” into divisive politics and simmering culture wars.

“I’ve wanted to make sure that I set the record straight,” he said during a press conference Thursday. “So, I do owe an apology … to Diet Mountain Dew.”

Beshear solemnly pulled out a plastic bottle of the bright green zero-sugar soda.

“Ale8One is definitely the soft drink of Kentucky, but I don’t believe the government should be making your decisions,” Beshear said.

“So, if you enjoy Diet Mountain Dew, uh, you be you. We want to support you. And to Diet Mountain Dew, very sorry. Didn’t mean to say negative things about you. Just remember, I am from here, just like everybody else that’s speaking out.”

Beshear’s trolling comes just days after Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance joked during a rally Monday that Democrats would think it was “racist” that he’d been drinking Diet Mountain Dew. It was an absurd idea that made him laugh really hard, and made plenty of Americans laugh really hard at him.

On Monday, Beshear had robustly condemned Vance’s comment, calling it “weird.”

“Who drinks Diet Mountain Dew?” the Kentucky governor asked on CNN, noting that Vance “ain’t from here.”

Beshear, a popular Democratic leader in an otherwise red state, is in the process of being vetted as a possible running mate, according to the Courier-Journal. In the past week, Beshear has repeatedly gone after Vance for being a “phony,” and seems to be subtly hinting at the Republican’s stance on abortion in his slight about the government “making your decisions” for you.

Meanwhile, Vance has been linked to plenty of ideas that are way more divisive than liking diet soda, but like his running mate Donald Trump, he’s proving to be prone to gaffes as well.

In his appearance on Fox and Friends Thursday morning, Donald Trump proposed that protesters who vandalize the American flag should face jail time.

In light of flag burning that occurred at protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress Wednesday, Trump said, “I think you should get a one-year jail sentence if you do anything to desecrate the American flag.” His remarks echo those he made as president-elect in 2016 and again amid protests against police brutality in 2020.

Trump went on, “Now people will say, ‘Oh, it’s unconstitutional.’ Those are stupid people. Those are stupid people that say that. We have to work in Congress to get a one-year jail sentence.”

Many online were quick to point out that the sainted conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia would be among such “stupid people.” Scalia detested flag burning but opposed state coercion against it, joining the majority opinion when the court struck down anti–flag burning laws in 1989 and 1990.

Justifying his idea on Fox, Trump lamented that protesters who burn the flag project a weak image of America to the world, saying, “Putin and President Xi of China, all over the world they’re watching this—Kim Jong Un, he looks at us like we’re a bunch of babies.… That wouldn’t happen in their countries. It’s impossible for that to happen in their country.”

Indeed, such protest would be unthinkable in authoritarian countries like Russia and China, where flag desecration is punishable by imprisonment. But Trump would do well to consider that emulating these countries’ restrictions on symbolic speech, to quote an opinion Scalia joined, would undermine “the very freedom that makes this emblem so revered, and worth revering.”