Former Trump White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin on Monday said there will likely be more “radioactive” comments by Ohio Senator JD Vance that turn off independent voters from backing Republicans in November.
Vance, the GOP vice presidential candidate running alongside former President Donald Trump, has received an immense amount of criticism since entering the 2024 race for his past remarks pertaining to women and reproductive rights.
A comment that has received particular attention comes from a 2021 interview Vance had with Fox News while he was running for Senate, during which he said that the country, under Democratic leadership, is being running by “childless cat ladies.”
“We are effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, so they want to make the country miserable too,” Vance said.
The senator has since defended his comments, saying that they were not “about criticizing people” who do not have children but were directed at “criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.” Trump also defended his running mate while speaking with Fox News last week, saying that Vance is “not against anything. He loves family. It’s very important to him.”
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But Griffin, who served as White House director of strategic communications under Trump’s administration, said on Monday that the impact of Vance’s statements would likely continue to sting the GOP.
“This cat lady comment has just really stuck in a way that I haven’t seen with many things in politics,” Griffin said during an appearance on CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.
“And the Trump news cycle, things tend to move rapidly. But with JD Vance, this has become like a 3-week-long story, and it’s genuinely hurting him with a demo that he needs the most—suburban women,” she continued. “It’s just radioactive.”
Polling has shown that Vice President Kamala Harris’ entry into the 2024 election has further hurt Trump’s chances of winning over women voters. In a survey by The New York Times and Siena College released on July 25, Harris held a 15-point lead over Trump among women voters, an 8-point jump from President Joe Biden’s support among women earlier last month.
Harris has also taken the lead or closed the gap on Trump across several national polls. Issues involving abortion have been a winning topic for Democrats since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Since launching his reelection campaign, Trump has been found liable of sexual assault and was convicted of 34 felony charges over a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, who said she was paid in 2016 to stay quiet about an extramarital affair she had with Trump in 2006. Trump denies ever having sexual relations with Daniels.
Experts have said that Trump’s pick in Vance is likely going to alienate some voter demographics. The Ohio senator in 2021 suggested that women should stay in violent marriages for the sake of their children, and he once supported a national 15-week pregnancy term ban on abortion. Vance has since said that he agrees with Trump that abortion should be decided at the state level and often accuses Democrats of mischaracterizing his words.
Griffin said on Monday that additional controversial statements from Vance were likely to come “because there just fundamentally was no vetting of JD Vance before he was added to the ticket.”
“And this will not be the last comment that we see that is very radioactive with independents needed to win this election,” she added.
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s campaign on Monday for comment via email.
