JD Vance Wanted Higher Taxes for Childless People, Video Shows

Donald Trump's running mate, JD Vance, previously said that Americans who don't have children should be taxed at a higher rate than those who do.

"Let's tax the things that are bad and not tax the things that are good," Vance said on The Charlie Kirk Show in 2021, ABC News reported.

"If you're making $100,000, $400,000 a year and you've got three kids, you should pay a different lower tax rate than if you're making the same amount of money, and you don't have any kids."

Newsweek reached out to the Trump campaign for comment via email.

It comes as Vance has come under fire for comments he has made about women and women's issues.

This week, he faced fresh criticism over comments he made in another 2021 interview where he questioned the leadership of Vice President Kamala Harris, the likely Democratic nominee, and others because they do not have biological children.

"We are effectively run in this country via the Democrats" 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," he said in a Fox News interview while running for Senate in Ohio.

He mentioned Harris, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has adopted twins with his husband.

"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?" Vance said.

Harris became a stepmother to husband Doug Emhoff's two children, Ella and Cole when the couple married in 2014. Emhoff's ex-wife, Kerstin Emhoff, has criticized Vance's comments.

"For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I," she said in a statement to NBC News. "She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it."

Ella Emhoff shared her mother's statement on Instagram, adding, "How can you be 'childless' when you have cutie pie kids like Cole and I?"

Buttigieg said Vance's comments are "beneath the dignity of anyone who seeks to present themselves as a U.S. senator or any kind of leader in this country."

The Harris campaign criticized Vance's comments, saying that "every single American has a stake in this country's future," according to the Associated Press.

Update 7/26/24, 10:32 a.m: This article was updated with additional information.