Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance’s ‘violent’ marriage comment resurfaces

JD Vance once suggested people should be more willing to stay in unhappy marriages for the sake of their kids – even if they’re “violent”.

Donald Trump’s running mate once suggested people should be more willing to stay in unhappy marriages for the sake of their children – even if said marriages are “violent”.

Footage of JD Vance speaking to Pacifica Christian High School in Southern California in September 2021 resurfaced online this morning, after the Ohio Senator was announced as the (possible) future US Vice President at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

In his remarks, Mr Vance claimed that people “shift spouses like they change their underwear”, inflicting long-term damage upon their kids.

“This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that like, ‘well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term,” he said, while reflecting on his own grandparents’ “incredibly chaotic marriage”.

“And maybe it worked out for mums and dads, though I’m sceptical. But it really didn’t work out for the kids of those marriages.

“And that’s what I think all of us should be honest about, is we’ve run this experiment in real time. And what we have is a lot of very, very real family dysfunction that’s making our kids unhappy.”

Ohio Senator JD Vance suggested people should be more willing to stay in unhappy marriages for the sake of their children in resurfaced footage. Picture: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images/AFP

Mr Vance was named as Donald Trump’s running mate at the Republican National Convention this morning. Picture: Rebecca Droke/AFP

Video of Mr Vance’s comments was first obtained by VICE News in July 2022, when he was running for the Senate.

Asked by the publication at the time why he thought “it would be better for children if their parents stayed in violent marriages than if they divorced”, Mr Vance “reject(ed) the premise of (the) bogus question”.

He then declared domestic violence in the US was “much higher among non-married couples” than married ones, and that “modern society’s war on (traditional) families has made our domestic violence situation much worse”.

“I’m an actual victim of domestic violence,” he continued, having recounted his family’s own tragic experiences with the issue in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.

“In my life I have seen siblings, wives, daughters, and myself abused by men. It’s disgusting for you to argue that I was defending those men.”

Throughout his political career, Mr Vance has routinely tied America’s divorce rates to societal instability, calling it “a profound evil”.

“The entire idea that you can discard your husband or your wife like a piece of clothing is one of the most dangerous assaults that we’ve ever seen on the family in this country,” he said in March 2022.

“If we want children to grow up with healthy, happy lives, we should be reminding them that the most important thing that we can do for our kids is make sure they grow up with a mum and dad at home. The assault on the institution of marriage has been a profound evil.

“It hasn’t just affected our adults, it’s affected our children in big ways.”

Mr Vance and his wife, Usha Vance. Picture: Drew Angerer/Getty Images/AFP

The former venture capitalist’s views on other issues affecting women – namely abortion – are equally unambiguous.

“There’s something comparable between abortion and slavery, and that while the people who obviously suffer the most are those subjected to it, I think it has this morally distorting effect on the entire society,” he said in an interview with the Catholic Current in October 2021.

Mr Vance added that Americans have “begun to see children as inconveniences to be discarded, instead of blessings to cherish”.

Rape, meanwhile, is “inconvenient”, Mr Vance has said, and abortion laws should not include exceptions for it or incest.

“Two wrongs don’t make a right. It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society,” he told Columbus’ Spectrum News in September 2021.

“The question to me is really about the baby. We want women to have opportunities, we want women to have choices, but, above all, we want women and young boys in the womb to have a right to life.”