Harris Campaign Misquotes Vance amidst Criticism over Far-Left Record

Vice President Kamala Harris is once again targeting Republican vice presidential nominee Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and his pro-family positions, all while trying to face her own far-left political record. In a post on Wednesday, the Harris campaign’s social media account, Kamala HQ, fabricated a quote which it attributed to Vance. Sharing a video interview clip from The Federalist, the Harris campaign wrote, “JD Vance says he and Trump will ‘go to war against’ childless people, who he calls ‘sad, lonely, and pathetic…’”

The video clip itself, however, demonstrates that Vance never suggested “war” against childless people, only against the ideology which prizes education and career advancement over family. “I think we have to go to war against the anti-child ideology that exists in our country,” Vance said in the interview. He continued:

“A few weeks ago — I know Twitter is not real life, but — I forget even what caused it, but there was this ridiculous effort by millennial feminist writers to talk about why having kids was not a good thing, why they were glad they didn’t have kids, and even encouraging people who had had children to talk about why they regretted having children … which is, like, psychologically deranged to ask mothers on Mother’s Day to talk about why they regretted having children. And what it made me realize is that so much of what drives elite culture is mediocre millennial journalists who haven’t gotten out of their career what they thought they would, right?

“And the thing is, everybody can be an exceptional mother and father. Not everybody can be an exceptional journalist at The New York Times, and not enough people have accepted that if they put their entire life’s meaning into their credential, into where they went to school, into what kind of job they have, if you put all of your life’s meaning into that, you’re going to be the sort of person who asks women to talk about how they regret having children. You’re going to be a sad, lonely, pathetic person, and you’re going to know it internally, so you’re going to project it onto people who have actually built something more meaningful with their lives.”

Vance concluded, “I think we have to go to war against that ideology and the people behind it…” He recounted conversations that he’s had with his own sister, who expressed to him concerns that she should have “delayed having kids” in order to focus on her education or career. “It’s like, ‘Lindsay, you’ve been a great mom. Your children are happy. They’re healthy. You’ve taken good care of them,’” Vance commented. “People like my sister should not feel like the cultural messaging is ‘your life is inadequate.’ The people who are sending that message should feel that their life is inadequate, and of course they do. They’re just too ashamed about it, to talk about it.”

This follows the Harris campaign’s claims last week that Vance intends to raise taxes on adults without children, when he in fact was promoting the bipartisan Child Tax Credit. Kamala HQ wrote that Vance “says adults without children should have their taxes raised…” In the video shared by the Harris campaign, Vance actually said, “If you’re making $100,000 [to] $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…”

Harris’s attacks against Vance’s pro-family policy positions comes as the vice president is taking heat for her lengthy record of far-left policies. In a resurfaced video clip from 2010, during her tenure as the District Attorney for San Francisco, Harris admitted, “I am a radical.” She continued, “I do believe that we need to get radical, about what we are doing, and take it seriously.” With a long record of far-left policies — including aggressive abortion promotion and the targeting of pro-life Americans, significantly unpopular open-borders positions, and continued pandering to the LGBT agenda — Harris is facing criticism from Republicans for her extreme positions.

Former President Donald Trump has already released a series of campaign ads focusing on Harris’s failure to enforce U.S. immigration law and secure the nation’s southern border. The ads brand Harris as “Weak. Failed. Dangerously liberal.” Harris’s own campaign ads, meanwhile, focus on her commitment to abortion expansion and gun control.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) has also pointed to Harris’s record as her greatest weakness. In an interview on Sunday, DeSantis said of Harris, “She’s incredibly vapid, even more incredibly liberal. And she doesn’t have any accomplishments. In fact, she owns all the policies of the Biden-Harris administration. She owns the border; she owns the inflation.” The Florida governor noted that those failed liberal policies make Harris an easy target for her political opponents, saying that “if we had to pick someone, I think we would pick Harris because she owns all the policies. She’s not going to be able to distance herself from them, and most Americans think this country’s going in the wrong direction.” However, he did acknowledge that the 81-year-old President Joe Biden, who was pressured to retire his reelection campaign last month, “set the bar so low” that Harris “look[s] like Socrates” in comparison. “Now you have somebody who’s younger, so we’re in for a battle here,” he warned.

The following day, DeSantis again hit Harris on her left-wing record. “I mean, they’re taking a San Francisco Democrat who has no accomplishments — she’s as vapid a politician as you’re going to find — and they’re trying to turn her into a cultural phenomenon,” the governor said in an interview on Monday, defining the vice president as “a leftist San Francisco Democrat.” He continued, “San Francisco Democrats have destroyed the city of San Francisco; San Francisco Democrats have also destroyed the state of California. Why on earth would we want to have a San Francisco Democrat in the Oval Office to dig our country even into a deeper hole than Biden is already leaving us?”

DeSantis emphasized the point again on Tuesday over social media. “We have Floridians who moved to our state to escape the policies of San Francisco Democrats. Implementing those policies nationally under a Harris administration is a non-starter,” the governor quipped. “Kamala has no chance in the Sunshine State.”

And again on Thursday, DeSantis reiterated Harris’s left-wing positions, particularly regarding transgenderism. Tesla founder Elon Musk alleged over social media that Harris supports biological men identifying as female and competing in women’s sports, sharing a video of a biological male punching a female athlete in the face during a women’s boxing match in the Olympics. DeSantis responded, “Of course she supports it. Biden-Harris admin is even trying to strip $$ for school lunches for poor kids from schools who don’t embrace gender ideology.” He added, “Biden-Harris elevate the ‘right’ of a male athlete to compete against women over the rights of women athletes to compete with fairness and integrity.”

According to Breitbart News, the Trump campaign also alleged that Harris supports male-on-female violence in women’s sports, saying, “Kamala has yet to do an interview since becoming the presumptive Democrat nominee for president. When she does, she should explain why she supports boys in girls’ sports and locker rooms.”