Vice presidential candidate JD Vance agreed with a podcast host in 2020 that the “whole purpose of the postmenopausal female” is to help raise grandchildren.
The remark came during an appearance on a podcast called “The Portal,” hosted by Eric Weinstein, who at the time was the managing director of an investment firm founded by billionaire Vance backer Peter Thiel. Vance was speaking about how the mother of his wife, Usha Vance, took a sabbatical for a year to help take care of their newborn son.
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The podcast was resurfaced by Heartland Signal.
“You can sort of see the effect it has on him to be around them, they spoil him, all the classic stuff that grandparents do to grandchildren,” Vance said. “But it makes him a much better human being to have exposure to his grandparents.”
“That’s the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female in theory,” Weinstein replied.
Vance agreed with the remarks in the middle of the statement. Later, Weinstein said that having grandparents on hand to help with a newborn was a “weird, unadvertised feature of marrying an Indian woman.” Vance, whose in-laws immigrated from India, didn’t push back on that remark.
A spokesperson for the Ohio senator, who officially became Donald Trump’s running mate at last month’s Republican National Convention, rejected claims that Vance had agreed with the statements.
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“The media is dishonestly putting words in JD’s mouth — of course he does not agree with what the host said,” the spokesperson told the Daily Beast. “JD reacted to the first part of the host’s sentence, assuming he was going to say: ‘that’s the whole purpose of spending time with grandparents.’”
“It’s a disgrace that the media is lying about JD instead of holding Kamala Harris accountable for her policies that caused sky high prices for groceries and everyday necessities, a disaster at the southern border, and a historic drug overdose epidemic.”
The remarks add another hitch to Vance’s efforts to shore up support for the Trump ticket before the November election. Last month, past comments he’d made lumping Harris into his description of the left wing’s “childless cat ladies” who are “miserable” with their lives caused an uproar on the campaign trail.
Democratic organizers, however, embraced the designation and have used it to draw more support for her campaign.
