CNN host Anderson Cooper and guest Bryan Lanza clashed Friday evening over Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance’s previous remarks calling out “childless cat ladies.”
Lanza appeared on “Anderson Cooper 360” to discuss former President Donald Trump announcing Vance as his running mate last week at the Republican National Convention (RNC). Cooper began by asking Lanza if he believes the Trump campaign is “having any buyer’s remorse,” following resurfaced clips of Vance’s stance on family tax cuts.
“Absolutely not,” Lanza said. “I think just yesterday, President Trump did an interview where he said he was proud to have J.D. on the ticket and he would do it again. Let‘s look at the rollout, in the past week since J.D. has been rolled out, his book, ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ has sold 600,000 new copies. It‘s become one of the top rated films on Netflix. So clearly there‘s an interest in J.D. It‘s a positive interest and you‘ll see it expand.”
“He‘s got his comments to address. I was a consultant on his Senate campaign. I helped launch the super PAC for J.D. So we‘ve got to clean up comments, obviously. The media is going to do the best to distort those comments. We‘ve seen that happen in the past week, but —” Lanza continued.
Cooper then jumped in, pushing back to state how it is “hard to distort” Vance’s comments calling out “childless cat ladies.”
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“No, but I‘m talking about the distortion is criticizing J.D. saying that people have families who have more kids should receive tax credits. That‘s actually a thoughtful answer if you really think about it. Most western countries are having huge population declines,” Lanza continued. “They‘re having to figure out how to address it. You have Japan that‘s suffering tremendously from a population decline. And Hungary — Hungary has actually found a solution for that by incentivizing families from having kids.
“You guys love Hungary and Viktor Orbán,” Cooper pushed back.
Media outlets have recently resurfaced Vance’s previous comments on family tax cuts and interviews calling out the Democrat Party for not supporting American families. During a 2021 interview Vance made a comment on Fox News standing firm in his position while slamming the “childless cat ladies,” according to ABC News.
“We are effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, 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,” Vance previously said.
In an interview with political commentator Megyn Kelly on Friday, Vance stood by his pro-family stance and called out the remark as sarcasm, saying “people are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance, and the substance of what I said, Megyn — I’m sorry, it is true.”
Featured Image Credit: European People’s Party