JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate and US senator from Ohio, attacked teachers who do not have children in newly resurfaced remarks from 2021.
In the resurfaced clip, Vance, who was speaking at a forum held by the Center for Christian Virtue, attacks “leaders on the left” and Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, for not having children.
“So many of the leaders of the left, and I hate to be so personal about this, but they’re people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children, that really disorients me and disturbs me,” Vance can be heard saying in the clip.
“Randi Weingarten, who’s the head of the most powerful teachers’ union in the country, she doesn’t have a single child. If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone.”
In a post on X, Weingarten responded to Vance’s resurfaced comments, calling them “gross”, and adding that the remarks are “sad and insulting to millions of modern families, and school teachers including Catholic nuns, none of whom should be targeted for their family decisions”.
Weingarten, whose union endorsed Kamala Harris for president in July, continued: “Teachers who are in back-to-school mode right now help other people’s children every single day. Those who virtuously serve our communities should be lauded, not vilified.”
The remarks resurfaced on social media this week and have already been making the rounds online. Kamala Harris’s campaign also shared the clip of the remarks online on Tuesday.
A spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but in a statement sent to NBC News on Tuesday, Taylor Van Kirk, a spokesperson for Vance, said the Ohio senator “will continue to loudly call this crap out to defend our kids”.
“There is no bigger threat to American children than the leftwing indoctrination being peddled in our schools by radicals like Randi Weingarten, with the support of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” Van Kirk added.
The newly resurfaced comments come just weeks after Vance came under fire after a clip of him in 2021 calling leading Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies” resurfaced after he was chosen by the former president Donald Trump to be his running mate in the 2024 election. The comments caused outrage and were quickly denounced by many Democrats, as well as celebrities and some Republicans.
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Vance has claimed that the “childless cat ladies” comment was merely a “sarcastic remark”.
In additional resurfaced clips, Vance has said that people without children should pay higher taxes, and that people with children should be given more voting power than those without children.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
