Pete Buttigieg epically slams JD Vance’s attacks on childless Americans

Out Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg clapped back at Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) for his 2021 comments that Americans without children have “no physical commitment to the future of this country” and that parents of children should get extra votes during elections. An estimated 57% of U.S. adults under 50 are childless and say it’s unlikely they’ll have kids.

“When I was deployed to Afghanistan, I didn’t have kids back then,” Buttigieg told satirist Jon Stewart during the Monday episode of The Daily Show. “But I will tell you, especially when there was a rocket attack going on, my commitment to this country felt pretty physical.”

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The gay transportation secretary said it’s important to focus not on only on what Democrats stand against, but what they stand for.

Stewart responded, “This is why people love seeing you going onto [news] shows because that framing is perfect, because it does. It points to that idea that who are you to tell what’s in someone else’s heart about what they feel about the future, what they feel about this country. And the sacrifices that you made, as you said, without having had children, were tremendous. So it’s shocking.”

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Vance made his comment while speaking at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a conservative organization, in 2021. At the time, he also said parents should be able to cast additional votes on behalf of their children.

“A lot of people are unable to have kids for very complicated and important reasons … there are people, of course, for biological reasons, medical reasons that can’t have children – the target of these remarks is not them,” Vance said. “Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of those children. When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power—you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic—than people who don’t have kids.”

“Let’s face the consequences and the reality: If you have … no physical commitment to the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice,” he said.

His recently resurfaced comment is just one of a growing number of past statements now being used to criticize Vance. He also once said that he hates the police, considered Trump as a racist and “America’s Hitler,” saw disgraced conspiracy theorists as more truthful than mainstream news broadcasters, and saw presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris as a “miserable cat lady” because she had no children. (At the time of the last comment, Harris was a stepmother to two children.)

Earlier in the interview, Stewart asked why Buttigieg regularly appears on the right-wing Fox News network.

Buttigieg replied, “How I won Iowa [during the 2020 Democratic primary] really was, partly through kind of outreach and finding people are not hardcore partisans, but do usually get their information in a very certain, and I would argue, very narrow way. I have a chance that, as long as they’ll have me on, I have a chance to, you know, puncture that bubble.”

“What’s the point of having a conversation if you’re not speaking to people who don’t already agree with you?” Buttigieg added.

Buttigieg confirmed to Stewart that Harris is vetting him as a possible running mate.

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