'Not Weird At All' Vance Stuns CNN, While Loser Threatens Lawsuit
2025 running mate tried to emerge from weeks-long messaging gaffes by doubling down on his “anti-child” rhetoric.
Donald Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) continued his brazen framing of Democrats as “anti-child” on Sunday, referencing COVID-19 masking as an attempt to paint his opposition as out of touch as he struggles through a weeks-long, often self-inflicted battering over his past comments.
Vance told CNN host Dana Bash that Democrats had become “anti-family” in policy and that Kamala Harris’ campaign was taking his “childless cat ladies” out of context. Before becoming a senator, he told ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson in 2021 that the U.S. was being run by “childless cat ladies,” name-dropping Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
(Harris is the stepmother of two children, and Buttigieg adopted two children in 2021.)
“I criticized Kamala Harris for being part of a set of ideas that exist in American leadership that is anti-family,” Vance said. “I never, Dana, criticize people for not having kids. I criticize people for being anti-child. And I do think that Kamala Harris—”
“You think she’s anti-child?” Bash shot back.
“—has made some bizarre statements,” Vance continued.
He claimed Harris said it was reasonable for people not to have children due to climate change, a false reference to a remark Harris made last year empathizing with those struggling with “climate anxiety” as they considered having kids.
Vance then tried to compare it to COVID-era masking, saying Democrats didn’t understand young children enough when imposing mask mandates on children. (Mask mandates started under the Trump administration.)
“I think that if we had more people who took the right perspective and had a little bit more understanding of how little kids actually operate, we would not have made so many of those mistakes,” Vance said.
“People didn't know as much because it was literally a novel virus,” Bash said.
The exchange left Vance frazzled, prompting an attack on Bash pursuing the line of questioning at all.
“You’ve now asked me three questions about comments that I made three years ago,” Vance said. “I wonder what Kamala Harris thinks about the fact that she supported policies that opened the American southern border. I wonder what Kamala Harris thinks about the fact that she lied to the American people about Joe Biden’s mental facility for the office.”
“But I’m interviewing you, not Kamala Harris,” Bash reminded him.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump repeated some of his favorite evidence-free attack lines:
Featured in a "Fox & Friends" segment on Fox News in which the former president called in, the voter explained at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota that he has regularly been helping five of his eight children financially, as they are "struggling" to afford necessities.
"How are you going to make the economy—not just the food and electricity—but bring down the rent prices, the housing prices, so that these kids can survive without their parents' help?" said the voter.
The former president didn't address the voter directly, instead telling a Fox correspondent that he likely had the support of "at least 99, perhaps 100%" of the people at the motorcycle event, before launching into a meandering reply to the question.
"We're going to drill, baby, drill, we're gonna bring down the cost of energy," he said. "Energy's what caused the worst inflation, I think, in the history of our country. Food prices are up 50%, sometimes more. You look at bacon. Bacon has quadrupled. You can't order bacon, you can't order anything. We're living horribly."
After telling the voter that he would ensure China and other countries were "treating us good"—and saying nothing about introducing programs to bring down rent prices, the subject of the man's question, the former president said the voter had been "in great shape" during his presidency and exaggerated the current price of gasoline, which has also trended downward since 2021.
Weird bone spurs flare-up:
Former President Donald Trump wasn’t completely lying about his near-death helicopter experience after all, but the 2024 Republican presidential nominee did get a few details mixed-up.
For one, the Black man Trump mistook for former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was actually former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator, Nate Holden.
“I guess we all look alike,” said Holden in an interview with Politico. He added, “Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco. I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles.”
Even though it was Trump’s own mistake, The New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman told CNN that Trump has threatened to sue the newspaper for reporting that Brown denied the incident.
Trump claimed to have records to prove the incident, and made fun of Haberman when she asked to see them.
“He made fun of me asking that in a sort of child sing-song voice,” said Haberman. But she said what she found most interesting about her talk with Trump was that he chose to focus on proving the incident over his presidential campaign.
“He was focusing on this because that is what we have seen him do historically when he is in times of stress,” said Haberman.
The embarrassing racial mix-up comes as a new poll by The New York Times/Siena College shows that Trump’s Black opponent, Kamala Harris, is now leading him in three battleground states.
The poll showed Harris has now moved ahead of Trump by four points in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In all of those states, 50 percent of those polled said they would likely vote for Harris while 46 percent favored Trump.
The issue of race continues to be a problem for Trump, and mistaking one Black man for another on that infamous helicopter ride will not help him.
Now 95 years old, Holden explained to Politico that Trump was looking to develop the site of a historic Los Angeles hotel around 1999, and—as the senator representing the district—Holden had approved the project to go ahead.
Meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan, Holden and Trump planned to pop over to Atlantic City, New Jersey, in a helicopter to tour Trump’s new Taj Mahal casino. But things, as Trump correctly recounted, took a harrowing turn on the way.
In the helicopter were Holden, Trump, Trump’s late brother Robert, attorney Harvey Freedman, and Barbara Res, Trump’s former executive vice president of construction and development.
As Res wrote in her book, All Alone on the 68th Floor (2013), “Very shortly thereafter the pilot let us know he had lost some instruments and we would need to make an emergency landing,” she wrote. “By now, the helicopter was shaking like crazy.”
Res told Politico on Friday that Trump liked to say that Holden “turned white.” But Holden said it was Trump who was really afraid.
“He was white as snow,” said Holden. “And he was scared s---less.”
And the way Holden remembers it, the topic of Vice President Kamala Harris did not come up, as Trump claimed.
“He either mixed it up,” Holden said. “Or, he made it up.”
He added, “This was just too big to overlook. This is a big one. Conflating Willie Brown and me? The press is searching for the real story and they didn’t get it. You did.”
