J.D. Vance has been making the rounds trying to clean up his remarks about "childless cat ladies," but CNN's John Berman said his efforts were backfiring.
The Ohio Republican dismissed Kamala Harris and other Democrats who haven't had children in an interview from 2021 with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson that re-surfaced last week. Donald Trump's running mate has since made appearances on multiple conservative media outlets trying to justify and recontextualize his remarks.
"He talked about ... Vice President Kamala Harris and others as being childless cat ladies, and maybe [they] look at things differently because they don't have children," Berman said. "Well, Vance last night tried to clean that up a little bit on TV."
Vance told Fox News host Trey Gowdy that being a parent had a "profound effect on somebody's perspective," but he insisted that being a parent wasn't necessary to "participate fully in the life of this country," and claimed Democrats had "aggressively lied" about his statements that were captured on video.
"There is the old adage, if you're explaining, you're losing," Berman said. "But I guess my question is, does this have legs beyond this going forward?"
Kate Bedingfield, former communications director for President Joe Biden, believed Vance's comments about women would likely remain a problem for the Trump campaign.
"I think it absolutely does for a few reasons," Bedingfield said.
"First of all, this is now I think his second or maybe even third, but we'll charitably say his second, effort to clean this up. I mean, the first time he essentially doubled down on what he had said about women and apologized to the cats that he had insulted in the original clip.
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"So voters have seen over the last, now almost week, they've seen him double down on this and really embrace it, so it's tough to now come out and say, 'Oh, well, that wasn't really what I meant.' But even in some ways, even more importantly, I think it will continue to have legs because it reinforces a broader problem that the Republican ticket has in being anti-woman, their position on choice, the fact that they believe that they should insert themselves in between women and their doctors in making health care decisions.
"The fact that they're supportive of restricting birth control and IVF. I mean, they have a problem with women in this race, particularly suburban, moderate women who have supported Democrats in the wake of the Dobbs decision.
"I think everything that J.D. Vance does that continues to remind people how much the Republican ticket rejects the idea that women should be able to live their lives the way they want to live them is going to be a problem for them, absolutely," she added.
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