JD Vance has said it is “deranged” and “very crazy” for women not to have children due to concerns about the climate crisis in his latest comments wading in on the choices of childfree Americans.

Donald Trump’s running mate has struggled to shake off the backlash for calling Kamala Harris and other Democrats “childless cat ladies” in a resurfaced interview with Tucker Carlson from 2021.

Now, in a new interview with The New York Times published on Saturday, the VP candidate was confronted once again about his past sexist comments less than one month out from the election.

While Vance admitted that his “childless cat ladies” remarks were “dumb”, he went on to stand by his argument, claiming that the US has become “almost pathologically anti-child” and that not having children due to concerns over climate change is “bizarre.”

“Look, they were dumb comments. I think most people probably have said something dumb, have said something that they wish they had put differently,” he said, before insisting he was not talking about “people who it just didn’t work out for, for medical reasons, for social reasons, like set that to the side, we’re not talking about folks like that.”

“What I was definitely trying to illustrate ultimately in a very inarticulate way is that I do think that our country has become almost pathologically anti-child,” he said.

Vance went on to call this so-called “pathological frustration with children” “very dark” and suggested it is “sociopathic” to consider climate change when deciding whether or not to have children.

“I think you see it sometimes in the political conversation, people saying, well, maybe we shouldn’t have kids because of climate change. You know, when I’ve used this word sociopathic?” he said.

“Like, that, I think, is a very deranged idea: the idea that you shouldn’t have a family because of concerns over climate change.”

When pressed if he thinks it is “sociopathic” that some women don’t have children because they’re worried about climate change, Vance said: “I think that is a bizarre way of thinking about the future. Not to have kids because of concerns over climate change?... Yeah, I think that’s a really, really crazy way to think about the world.”

The Ohio senator’s latest comments on the lifestyle choices of American women come after a 2021 interview resurfaced almost as soon as Vance was tapped to join Trump on the Republican party’s ticket.

In the interview, Vance said that the US is 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.”

“Look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” he continued.

“How does it make any sense we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

Public figures including Jennifer Aniston, Harris’s family members, Democratic lawmakers and everyday Americans responded with outrage over the comments.

Vance quickly went into damage control mode, defending his remarks with various explanations ranging from it being “sarcasm” to simply being “true.”

Last week, Harris hit back at the rhetoric, telling the Call Her Daddy podcast “I feel sorry for” Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders who took Vance’s comments further by saying Harris doesn’t have kids “keeping her humble.”

In the new Times interview, Vance also tried to walk back or explain away some other past controversies – from his comments about hating the police to his stance on a national abortion ban.

“I’m OK with the states making these decisions, even if they make decisions that JD Vance or Donald Trump might not make,” he claimed on the latter.

During the VP debate, Vance had falsely claimed that he “never supported a national abortion ban” but instead supported “some minimum national standard.”

This was untrue. In 2022, when he was running for the Senate, Vance told the Very Fine People podcast he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.” He also supported a proposal to impose a national ban on abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy.

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