Vance argued for higher tax rate on childless Americans in 2021 interview

As former President Donald Trump's new running mate, JD Vance, faces renewed scrutiny over his previous comments criticizing childless individuals, an unearthed 2021 interview shows the Ohio senator advocating for higher taxes on Americans without children.

The comments came in a 2021 episode of The Charlie Kirk Show podcast, where Kirk, the CEO of the conservative student organization Turning Point USA, was discussing how Republicans could shift public perception of certain conservative ideas from "unthinkable" to accepted policy.

"So JD ... what are you going to do to change this conversation? Everything we have to do should be about moving ideas from unthinkable, to sensible, to popular, to policy," said Kirk, according to a video of the interview obtained by ABC News.

In response, Vance, who at the time had not yet officially launched his 2022 Senate campaign, suggested that the country needed to "reward the things that we think are good" and "punish the things that we think are bad" -- before suggesting that individuals without children should be taxed at a higher rate than those with children.

"So, you talk about tax policy, let's tax the things that are bad and not tax the things that are good," Vance said in the interview, which is no longer public on Kirk's channel. "If you are making $100,000, $400,000 a year and you've got three kids, you should pay a different, lower tax rate than if you are making the same amount of money and you don't have any kids. It's that simple."

In response to Vance's comments, Vance spokesperson William Martin told ABC News, "The policy Senator Vance proposed is basically no different than the Child Tax Credit, which Democrats unanimously support."

Vance made the comments during a March 2021 appearance on Kirk's show, but the YouTube page for the episode now reads, "This video has been removed by the uploader," and the interview is also no longer accessible on Kirk's podcast Rumble account or on other podcast services.

The video appeared to be public as recently as February of this year, but it was no longer accessible by Wednesday, according to Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. ABC News located an audio version of the interview that remained online, but not on a website run by Kirk.

A spokesperson for Kirk told ABC News that earlier this year, multiple long-form videos on Kirk's channel were removed due to a reorganization of the page and that the removal of Vance's 2021 interview had nothing to do with his selection as vice president.

In recent days, Vance has faced criticism over other previous public comments he's made, including comments made in 2021 in which he questioned Vice President Kamala Harris' leadership due to her not having biological children -- despite Harris having two stepchildren.

"We are effectively run in this country via the Democrats" who are "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," Vance said in the 2021 interview on Fox News.

As examples, Vance cited Harris, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who adopted twins in 2021.

In response to criticism over his "childless cat lady" comment, Vance spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk said the senator's words have been "twisted."

"Once again, the leftwing media have twisted Senator Vance's words and spun up a false narrative about his position on the issues," Van Kirk said. "The only childlessness we should be talking about are the childless parents who lost their kids to the murderous thugs and deadly fentanyl coming across Kamala's southern border."

Speaking at a conservative organization called the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in 2021, Vance also argued that parents should have the ability to cast additional votes on behalf of their children.

"A lot of people are unable to have kids for very complicated and important reasons ... there are people, of course, for biological reasons, medical reasons that can't have children -- the target of these remarks is not them," Vance said, prefacing his argument.

"Let's give votes to all children in this country, but let's give control over those votes to the parents of those children. When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power -- you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic -- than people who don't have kids," Vance argued.

"Let's face the consequences and the reality: If you don't have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn't get nearly the same voice," he said.

Vance, who was announced as Trump's running mate last week, has three children with his wife Usha.