Washington — Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance defended his comment about "childless cat ladies" on Friday as he faces backlash after his 2021 remarks recirculated this week. 

"Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment," he said in an interview on "The Megyn Kelly Show" on SiriusXM. "I've got nothing against cats. I've got nothing against dogs. … People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said. The substance of what I said, Megyn — I'm sorry, it's true." 

"These people want to conflate the personal situation here with the fact that I'm making an argument that our entire society has become skeptical and even hateful towards the idea of having kids," he said later. 

During an appearance on Fox News in 2021, Vance, who was running for his Ohio Senate seat, said the U.S. 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." 

He continued, "It's just a basic fact — you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?"

Vance made similar remarks against Democrats in a 2021 speech at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, in which he said his criticism was not directed at those who could not have children for biological or medical reasons. 

Vance reiterated Friday that "it's not a criticism of people who don't have children." 

"This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child," he said. 

The comment, he said, stemmed from a conversation he had with his wife, Usha, about the pressure she felt to not have children because of the negative effects it could have on her career. At the time, two of their three children had been born. 

"What a weird society that we set up where moms who want to work, the thought that a lot of them are having is, 'I can't have more babies because it's going to be bad for my career,'" he said, later adding that "having kids is good" because "being a parent changes your perspective on the world." 

Actor Jennifer Aniston, who has been open about her fertility struggles, was among those who criticized Vance's previous remarks, as well as his positions on reproductive rights. In June, Vance voted against a Democratic bill that sought to protect and expand access to fertility treatments like IVF, while signing onto a statement with his Republican colleagues that said they "strongly support continued nationwide access to IVF." 

"Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day. I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too," Aniston wrote on social media earlier this week. 

Vance said comments such as those are "disgusting" because his daughter is 2 years old. 

"If she had fertility problems," he said, "I would try everything I could to try to help her because I believe families and babies are a good thing." 

Avril Silva contributed to this report.