JD Vance's wife defines her husband's 'childless cat ladies' comment as a joke

Usha Vance, the wife of J.D. Vance, came to her husband's defense after the Republican vice presidential nominee drew criticism from within the Democratic Party for remarks he made about women without children.

"I took a moment to look and actually see what he had said and try to understand what the context was and all that, which is something that I really wish people would do a little bit more often. And the reality is he made a quip in service of making a point that he wanted to make that was substantive, and it had actual meaning," Usha Vance said in an interview on "Fox & Friends," the first she's done since her husband was nominated by Donald Trump as his running mate.

Specifically, J.D. Vance said in 2021, "We’re 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."

"J.D. absolutely at the time, and today, would never ever, ever want to say something to hurt someone who was trying to have a family who was really struggling with that. And he made that clear at the time, and he’s made that clear today. ... And we have lots of friends who have been in that position. It is challenging and never ever anything that we want to mock or make fun of," Usha Vance added.

In 2014, J.D. and Usha married and are the parents of three children.