In a Fox News interview, the wife of Trump running mate J.D. Vance defended a recent comment her husband made in 2021, comparing some in government to "childless cat ladies" who couldn't relate to the needs of American parents.

During a sit-down with Ainsley Earhardt, Usha Vance was asked about Vance's comment during a 2021 Fox News interview with Tucker Carlson, in which he described Democrats and “corporate oligarchs” as “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives” and who “want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”

The comment has gone viral, and of course those who want to use it against him have taken it out of context, which Usha Vance provided.

“The reality is, he made a quip in service of making a point that he wanted to make that was substantive,” she explained. “What is it about our leadership and the way that they think about the world that makes it so hard sometimes for parents?”

The context

It wasn't about Vance denouncing people without children, she said, but rather about Democrats in the government being unable to relate to the needs of parents with children.

“It’s just a basic fact — you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” he told Carlson in 2021.

“And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” he asked.

When you look at the context of what Vance said instead of trying to make it a gotcha moment, it makes perfect sense. Unless you are one of the people he's talking about, apparently.

"Three-word phrase"

Usha Vance went on to scold other media outlets and critics for their eagerness to divorce "three-word-phrases" from their context to further their own political ends.

It's unfair to seize on “this three-word phrase or that three-word phrase because what he was really saying is that it can be really hard to be a parent in this country — and sometimes our policies are designed in a way that make it even harder,” she said.

To those who saw it as mocking women who were trying to have families, she said her husband “would never, ever, ever want to say something to hurt someone who was trying to have a family.”

“We have lots of friends who have been in that position,” she told Earhardt. “It is challenging and never ever anything that anyone would want to mock or make fun of.”

As for her family, Vance said she and J.D. were trying to keep things as normal as possible for their two young children amid a best-selling book/movie, "Hillbilly Elegy", and rapidly rising political career.

“I think what we’re going to do is continue to keep them, let them have their lives as children, which I think they really deserve — and let them spend lots of time with their father,” Usha said, noting that J.D. Vance was a "wonderful father."