Donald Trump's vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has defended resurfaced comments in which he called Democratic politicians a "bunch of childless cat ladies with miserable lives".
His remarks, made in 2021, have been roundly criticised this week, with Hollywood actress Jennifer Aniston among those to have hit out at the 39-year-old Republican.
"Obviously it was a sarcastic comment. People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said," Mr Vance told the conservative media personality Megyn Kelly on Friday.
"The substance of what I said, Megyn - I'm sorry, it's true," he added.
Mr Vance, who has three children, said he was not criticising people who do not have children in the interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, which he gave while running for the Senate.
"This is about criticising the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-children," he told The Megyn Kelly Show.
"The simple point that I made is that having children, becoming a father, becoming a mother, I really do think it changes your perspective in a pretty profound way," he said.
"I'm making an argument that our entire society has become sceptical and even hateful towards the idea of having kids."In the original interview, he questioned why some leading politicians did not have children. One of those he named was Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for November's election, who is stepmother to her husband Doug Emhoff’s two children.
"The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children," he said at the time. "How does it make any sense we've turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?"
The Senator from Ohio said the country was being 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".
On Friday, Mr Vance said: “I wish her step-children and Kamala Harris and her whole family the very best. The point is not that she’s lesser. The point is that her party has pursued a set of policies that are profoundly anti-child.”
Mr Vance made similar remarks against Democrats in a 2021 speech at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, in which he also said his criticism was not directed at those who could not have children for biological or medical reasons.
Jennifer Aniston, who has spoken publicly about her struggles while trying to have children through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), was among those who criticised his comments.
"I truly can’t believe that this is coming from a potential VP of the United States," she said on Thursday.
Pete Buttigieg, who was another Democratic politician named by Mr Vance in the original interview, also addressed the comments earlier this week, speaking about adopting twins with his husband, Chasten.
"The really sad thing is he said that after Chasten and I had been through a fairly heart-breaking setback in our adoption journey," Mr Buttigieg told CNN’s The Source programme.
Speaking to Fox News, Trump co-campaign chairman Chris LaCivita rejected any suggestion that Trump might regret his choice of running mate.
"JD was the best pick," Mr LaCivita said. "The president loves him. We love him."
