Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has defended his resurfaced comments from 2021, in which he referred to Democratic politicians as a “bunch of childless cat ladies with miserable lives.” The remarks have drawn significant criticism this week, with actress Jennifer Aniston among those condemning 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,” Vance told conservative media personality Megyn Kelly on Friday. “The substance of what I said, Megyn – I’m sorry, it’s true.”

Vance, who has three children, clarified that his remarks during the 2021 interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson were not meant to criticize people without children. Instead, he argued that the Democratic Party has become anti-family and anti-children.

“This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-children,” Vance explained on 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. I’m making an argument that our entire society has become skeptical and even hateful towards the idea of having kids.”

In the original interview, Vance questioned why some leading politicians did not have children, specifically naming Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for November’s election, who is a 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?”

Vance, a Senator from Ohio, also 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.”