Tech journalist Kara Swisher has myriad concerns about former President Donald Trump’s vice president pick JD Vance, but chief among them is that he “hates women,” Swisher said during Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference earlier this month.
“I’m not joking about it,” she said. “Go pay attention to what he’s saying.”
Swisher also isn’t a fan of his restrictive views on abortion, which he opposes in the cases or rape and incest but advocates for exceptions in cases when the mother’s life is endangered. Vance’s position on LGBTQ+ rights also “wasn’t good” for Swisher as a gay woman, she said. Last summer Vance introduced an Ohio bill that would classify gender-affirming care for minors as a Class C felony. One of Vance’s Yale Law School classmates, who is transgender, told the New York Times they and Vance were once friends until a 2021 falling-out after Vance publicly supported a similar piece of Arkansas legislation on gender-affirming care for minors.
Vance did not respond to a request for comment.
The tech journalist also recounted a time when Vance—whose foray into venture capital resulted in PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel introducing him to Trump—criticized her for not believing in the future.
“I have four kids; he only has two, I think,” Swisher said. “So I believe in the future twice as much as he does.”
Swisher’s own lambasting of Vance’s candidacy joined a chorus of other denouncers who criticized the senator’s attitude toward women after a 2021 Fox News interview resurfaced. Vance called Democratic leaders, including Vice President Kamala Harris and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “childless cat ladies” who, because they don’t have children, have no stake in the country’s political future, Vance argued.
“We are effectively run in this country…by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they wanna make the rest of the country miserable too,” Vance said. He later said he was referring to the Democratic Party, not people without children.
Vance’s stances have drawn scrutiny from both sides of the aisle, leading some Republican leaders, such as Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, to question Trump’s selection of Vance, particularly as some polls show Harris opening a small lead over Trump.
Though Vance said that his “cat lady” comments were sarcastic and the backlash was a result of him being taken out of context, he doubled down on his core message of Democrats being “anti-family.” Vance has supported higher tax rates for adults without children and touted a Hungarian policy that gives loans to married couples, then forgives them if the couple bears children.
Vance’s family members, including eldest sister Lindsay Lewis, have supported his policies. “JD was raised by some of the strongest women I know and went on to marry an incredibly strong woman in Usha,” Lewis told Fortune in an email statement. “JD is a testament to the women in his life, and the attacks from the media and Democrats that assume anything otherwise is vile.”
But Vance’s policy surrounding family and children is only the first of “so many” concerns Swisher had about him. Beyond criticizing Vance’s controversial relationship with Appalachia and his change of heart about Trump after calling him the “American Hitler” in a private text message in 2016, Swisher claimed that ultimately, Vance’s role would be to serve as the “butler in the U.S. government” for tech billionaires. She named PayPal Mafia members David Sacks, Elon Musk, and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz cofounder Ben Horowitz. She argued that giants like Thiel—who gave Vance $15 million toward his 2022 Ohio senatorial campaign—have propped up the politician as part of their own grab for power.
“They’re very much interested in power and control of the government,” Swisher said. “And they have disdain for the government.”
