GOP vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) ranted about how a lesbian who is the leader of a teachers’ union doesn’t have children and, therefore, shouldn’t be allowed to “brainwash and destroy” children’s minds. The woman he was referring to actually does have children and was a teacher in the 90s before working in teachers’ unions for decades.

“I think our conservative idea is that parents and families should determine what children learn, what values they are brought up with,” Vance said in newly surfaced audio from a 2021 forum held by the Center for Christian Virtue.

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“You know, it’s so many of the leaders of the left — and I hate to be so personal about this — but they’re people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children. And that really disorients me, and it really disturbed me.”

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His comments echo similar comments he made in the past about how people without children shouldn’t be allowed in positions of power in the government and even that people who don’t have children shouldn’t get an equal number of votes as people who do have children. He has previously attacked out Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Vice President Kamala Harris as “childless cat ladies,” even though Harris is a step-mom and Buttigieg was going through the adoption process at the time.

In the newly-surfaced comments, though, Vance directed his animus towards out American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

“Randi Weingarten, who’s the head of the most powerful teachers’ union in the country — she doesn’t have a single child. If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone,” Vance said.

Weingarten is a mother by marriage to her wife.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) attacked Weingarten similarly in 2023 during a House Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on Select Coronavirus Crisis hearing.

“Are you a medical doctor?” Greene asked Weingarten at the hearing. “Are you a mother?”

“What I’d like to talk about is your recommendations to the CDC as not a medical doctor, not a biological mother, um, and really not a teacher either,” Greene barked at Weingarten.

“You have no business advising the CDC what the medical guidelines were for school closures,” Greene said. “The problem is, is people like you need to admit that you’re just a political activist, not a teacher, not a mother, and not a medical doctor.”

In 2021, on Fox News, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) made similar comments about Weingarten.

“Randi Weingarten is a joke,” Cotton said at the time. “Randi Weingarten does not even have children of her own. What in the hell does she know about raising and teaching kids?”

“In fact, that’s probably why she was perfectly fine to shut down schools for two years and force kids to wear masks, because she didn’t have to deal with it at home.”

Vance claimed this weekend that his comments attacking politicians – mostly women – for not having children were a “sarcastic comment” that “a lot of Democrats have willfully misinterpreted.”

“I’m a real person, I’m going to make jokes, I’m going to say things sarcastically. And I think that what’s important is that we focus on the policy,” he claimed in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Weingarten adopted her stepchildren. She has not. We regret the error.