Members of Kamala Harris’ family are weighing in on Sen. JD Vance’s previous comments about “childless cat ladies" running the U.S. government.
On Thursday, film producer Kerstin Emhoff, the ex-wife of Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, responded to Vance's remarks.
“These are baseless attacks,” Kerstin Emhoff told CNN. “For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I. She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.”
Harris is a stepmother to her husband’s two children from his previous marriage to Kerstin Emhoff: Cole, 29, and Ella, 25.
We've got the news you need to know to start your day. Sign up for the First & 4Most morning newsletter — delivered to your inbox daily. >Sign up here.
Kerstin Emhoff’s recent Instagram story was a re-post of an Instagram story originally shared by her daughter, Ella.
“How can you be ‘childless’ when you have cutie pie kids like cole and I,” Ella wrote in her Instagram story. “@kemoff say it louder for the people in the back.”
“I love my three parents,” she also wrote.
U.S. & World
The day's top national and international news.
The family’s response came after comments Vance made in 2021 resurfaced after he was named the Republican vice presidential nominee earlier this month.
In a July 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, Vance shared his view that the country is 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.”
The Ohio senator specifically named Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, using them as examples to argue that “the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.”
In September 2021, Buttigieg announced he and his husband had welcomed twins, Penelope Rose and Joseph August.
Harris has been open about her close bond with her stepchildren over the years, calling them her “endless source of love and pure joy” in a 2019 essay for Elle.
She has also opened up about her solid relationship with her husband’s first wife.
“To know Cole and Ella is to know that their mother Kerstin is an incredible mother,” she wrote in her Elle essay. “Kerstin and I hit it off ourselves and are dear friends. She and I became a duo of cheerleaders in the bleachers at Ella’s swim meets and basketball games, often to Ella’s embarrassment. We sometimes joke that our modern family is almost a little too functional.”
Vance’s “cat ladies” remark inspired plenty of reactions on social media, including a response from Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani.
“As a childless cat lady I have a huge stake in America and am not miserable but thanks for your concern, Vance,” she wrote on X.
Many social media users also shared photos of Taylor Swift posing with one of her cats on her Time Person of the Year cover.
“hell hath no fury like a certain childless cat lady who has yet to endorse a presidential candidate,” one person wrote on X.
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
