The phrase “childless cat ladies,” which Travis Kelce’s fiancée, Taylor Swift, accepted as badge of honor, became a big talking point during the 2024 presidential election. The phrase was originally used by Vance during a 2021 interview on Fox News while running for the U.S. Senate in Ohio.
After the phrase was in spotlight during the 2024 election, Swift endorsed Kamala Harris in an Instagram post on Sept. 10, 2024. Alongside a photo of herself holding her cat, Benjamin Button, Swift signed the post, “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady.”
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Now, Vance is looking back on the controversy in his upcoming memoir, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” which is set to be released on Tuesday.
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According to excerpts first reported by NBC News, Vance called the comment “one of the dumbest things he has ever said.”
“It was a boneheaded comment, intentionally (and successfully) provocative rather than illuminating,” he wrote. “I could have made that point much more effectively, and with the benefit of showing a little charity to the many Americans who–for some reasons beyond their control–don’t have children.”
Vance also admitted that he failed to live up to his faith in that moment.
“When I consider the Church’s admonition to respect the dignity of every life, this was a clear moment where I failed,” he wrote.
The comments pop up in a chapter about the challenges of opposing abortion rights while also serving as a Christian politician.
Speaking with Tucker Carlson during a 2021 interview on Fox News, JD Vance claimed that the United States was being run 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.”
He specifically called out prominent Democrats.
“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 said. “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?”
Vance’s first memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” was published before the 2016 presidential election. Vance’s second memoir, “Communion” is a spiritual sequel to “Hillbilly Elegy.”
Travis Kelce’s fiancée Taylor Swift first broke her political silence in 2018
It happened on Oct. 7, 2018, during the U.S. midterm elections. Breaking years of strict political neutrality, Taylor Swift endorsed Democrats Phil Bredesen for the U.S. Senate and Jim Cooper for the House of Representatives.
Her opening line on Instagram directly addressed why she was finally choosing to speak up.
“In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now,” Swift wrote.
She went on to explain her personal values, explicitly stating her belief in LGBTQ+ rights and her horror at systemic racism, before directly calling out Republican candidate Marsha Blackburn’s voting record.
Edited by Oindrila Chowdhury