Oprah Winfrey turned Ohio Senator JD Vance’s much-derided “childless cat ladies” comment on its side on Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention.
“Despite what some would have you think, we are not so different from our neighbours. When a house is on fire, we don’t ask about the homeowner’s race or religion, we don’t wonder who their partner is or how they voted. No, we just try to do the best we can to save them,” Winfrey said from the convention stage.
Then she invoked Vance, the Republican Party’s nominee for vice president.
“And if the place happens to belong to a childless cat lady, well, we try to get that cat out, too,” said Oprah, who has spoken openly about her decision not to have children.
In recently resurfaced remarks Vance made on Fox News in 2021, the Ohio senator chided Kamala Harris as one of America’s “miserable” and “childless cat ladies,” leaving her with no stake in the country’s future.
“The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” Vance continued, calling out Harris alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cory Booker and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Harris is a stepmother to her husband’s two children from his first marriage.
When pressed to respond to the outrage, Vance somehow dug himself even deeper, seemingly missing the point about what made his comments about people without children so offensive.
“Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I’ve got nothing against cats,” Vance said in an interview on SiriusXM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show” last month, before adding that Harris and Democrats have “pursued a set of policies that are profoundly anti-child.”