JD Vance Was on ‘The View’ and It Went About As Well As You Can Imagine

Vice President JD Vance is making headlines for a whole new reason this week: the release of his new memoir, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith. While promoting the book, Vance made an appearance on The View on Tuesday, June 16th… and it turned into so much more than a typical press tour.

For starters, some members of the audience did not stand or applaud when Vance appeared onstage. And the appearance turned into a nearly-hour-long interview with the show’s full panel of hosts, who grilled him on topics ranging from ICE to economy to the Epstein files to the Trump administration’s erasure of Black history monuments. Vance even joked about the setting at the start of the show, saying: “This is a show of MAGA Republicans, right? That’s what my media team told me.”

Once the topic of Epstein and the yet-to-be-declassified files came to a head, Vance then tried to pivot the conversation back to his memoir. “Let’s talk about the book,” Vance chimed in. “I’m here to sell books. Communion!”

But the most viral moment from the ordeal rose out of one of the show’s panelists, Joy Behar, calling out Vance for his comments about “childless cat ladies.” The term originated from a 2021 appearance that Vance made on Tucker Carlson Tonight while running for a Senate seat in Ohio. At the time, he argued that “we’re 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 rest of the country miserable, too.” He specifically threw then-Vice President Kamala Harris into that category, even though she has two stepchildren.

The comment then resurfaced in 2024 once Vance was announced as Trump’s running mate, garnering reactions from Taylor Swift and even Harris herself. At the time, Vance joked on The Megyn Kelly Show that “Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I’ve got nothing against cats”, before blaming the media for “focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said.”

What Did JD Vance Say About Childless Cat Ladies?

Fast forward to 2026, and Vance was confronted about the comment more directly on The View. Behar argued that Vance made “a mea culpa of sorts for calling Democrats childless cat ladies,” before Vance immediately interjected and called it his “most boneheaded comment.”

“So, Joy said when we were off air that I’m fine, which I think is about the best endorsement that I’m going to get out of Joy Behar, for a Republican. Thank you. Graded on a curve here at The View!” Vance joked. “One of the things that I try to do, and all of us are always learning. [Sunny Hostin,] you said you were a lapsed Catholic, I’m a bad Catholic, that’s why we need grace as Christians, is because we recognize that there are certain things we’ve got to work on.”

“Did that comment actually shed light on something and start a discussion?” Vance continued. “Or did it just close people down? When I make a comment that just closes people down instead of trying to appreciate the point that I make, that’s a mistake and that’s on me to do better… The point I’d say on that, Joy, is, I do think, in a very subtle, sometimes in a more profound way, I think our country has become more anti-family and more anti-child.”

New episodes of The View air weekdays.

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