Chelsea Handler responded on Sunday to resurfaced comments from J.D. Vance regarding women without children.
“To put it in women-hating terms you understand, you’re being hysterical,” Handler said in a video posted to Instagram.
Last week, comments that Donald Trump‘s vice presidential running mate made in 2021 resurfaced online, including a clip in which Vance told Tucker Carlson that the United States was 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.”
“Listen up you wingnut elegy, this country is still controlled by men and systems that were set up by men that are carefully crafted to continue to benefit men,” Handler said in a fast-speaking response. “Let’s be clear, there is no correlation between childless people and the presidency. For example, our very first United States president, Mr. George Washington, didn’t have children. In fact, he had two stepchildren. That’s right, just like someone else I know,” she added, in reference to Vice President Kamala Harris, who is stepmother to two adult children with her husband, Doug Emhoff.
“To your point about Kamala not being fit because she’s not a mother, I’d like to remind you that no president in the history of the United States has ever been a mother,” Handler continued. “Maybe if she had five kids with three different men, and a scandalous affair with a porn star, and was convicted felon that would be more palatable to Republican men.”
Handler went on to refer to Vance as a “Diet-Mountain-Dew-drinking-couch-humping-dolphin-porn-afficionado,” further references to headlines from last week regarding viral clips from Vance’s campaign, including one since-debunked rumor that Vance wrote about having sex with a couch in his 2016 book, Hillbilly Elegy.
“All of us childless cat and dog ladies are going to go from childless and crushing it to childless and crushing you in November,” Handler said. “And before you tell me he didn’t really fuck a couch, spare me. I grew up in New Jersey in the ’80s where everyone had a couch in their basement and I know a couch fucker when I see one.”
Handler is not the only Hollywood figure to offer a response to Vance’s comments. Jennifer Aniston wrote on Wednesday, “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States,” adding, “All I can say is… Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day.”
Aniston, who has shared her personal IVF journey in the past, continued, “I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”
On Friday, Vance offered a response to Aniston’s criticism, telling Megyn Kelly he was not criticizing women with fertility issues.
“You’ve got Hollywood celebrities saying, ‘Oh, well, J.D. Vance, what if your daughter suffered fertility problems?’” he said. “Well, first of all, that’s disgusting because my daughter is two years old. And second of all, if she had fertility problems, as I said in that speech, I would try everything I could to try to help her because I believe families and babies are a good thing.”
