JD Vance Says He’s Still Sad His Relationship With Trans Friend Sofia Ended Over Gender-Affirming Care | Video
In July, the New York Times published excerpts from emails and text messages exchanged between JD Vance and Sofia Nelson, his Yale Law classmate and friend. Though the pair were once close, they had a falling out over their disagreements about gender-affirming health care — and Nelson gave 90 emails and text messages between the pair, spanning 2014-2017, to the Times.
In an interview with Vance published Saturday, he defended comments from those communications that have been publicly scrutinized, while also attacking the term “gender-affirming care” for trans people. Instead, Vance said he prefers to call its use by those underage as “chemical experimentation on minors.” Despite this disagreement over trans rights, Vance used Nelson’s preferred pronouns throughout the Times interview.
“But look, I’m not going to sit here and criticize Sofia. I love Sofia. I am very sad about what happened between me and Sofia,” Vance added. “Going back to 2013, 2014, she’s my friend, she’s transgender. I didn’t fully understand it, I just thought: I love this person, and I care about her, and I don’t have to sort of agree with every medical decision that she makes or even understand it to say, ‘Well, I love you, I care about you.'”
The conversation that pushed Vance and Nelson apart transpired around the time the now Republican VP nominee was running for Senate. “I had children at that point, and we were talking about gender-affirming care for minors. I think a more honest way to say it is not ‘gender-affirming care’ but ‘chemical experimentation on minors,'” he said. “And my affection for her didn’t mean that I thought this was a reasonable thing to do to 11-year-old children who are confused.”
“Sometimes confused by social media, sometimes confused because it’s really hard to be an 11-year-old, certainly in today’s media environment,” Vance said. “And yeah, we had a very strong disagreement about whether the proper response to that was humility. I would say it’s humility. Don’t give life-altering care to these kids, potentially life-destroying care to these kids. And she disagreed with me. She thought it was sort of an affront to transgender rights.”
In the Times interview, Vance also looked to explain why his tone has seemed to shift from comments like his critique of “childless cat ladies” to his cordial debate with Tim Walz.
“When I disagree with people, sometimes I’m a little sarcastic, but that was true 10 years ago, right? Sometimes I like to make fun of the political and media environment that we’re in,” Vance said.
The senator was also asked about his decision to convert to Catholicism in 2019 — and expressed sympathy for his wife over his passion for church.
He explained that his wife Usha, who was raised in a Hindu home that was “not especially religious,” was “really into it.” He explained, “Meaning, she thought that thinking about the question of converting and getting baptized and becoming a Christian, she thought that they were good for me, in sort of a good-for-your-soul kind of way.”
“And I don’t think I would have ever done it without her support, because I felt kind of bad about it, right?” he continued. “Like, you didn’t sign up for a weekly churchgoer. I feel terrible for my wife because we go to church almost every Sunday, unless we’re on the road.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Vance described his previous insistence that childless people are “psychotic” as “dumb comments.” He resisted walking back the slightly less strong term of “sociopathic” for people who choose not to have children over concern about climate change, but did acknowledge thinking about those environmental issues themselves as a legitimate concern.
“What I was trying to get at is that — I’m not talking about people who it just didn’t work out for, for medical reasons, for social reasons. Like, set that to the side, we’re not talking about folks like that,” Vance continued in his defense. “What I was definitely trying to illustrate, ultimately in a very inarticulate way, is that I do think that our country has become almost pathologically anti-child.”
What he called an anti-child pathology can be seen “sometimes in the political conversation, people saying, ‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t have kids because of climate change,'” he continued. “You know, when I’ve used this word ‘sociopathic’? Like, that, I think, is a very deranged idea: the idea that you shouldn’t have a family because of concerns over climate change. Doesn’t mean you can’t worry about climate change, but in the focus on childless cat ladies, we missed the substance of what I said.”
The conversation also included discussion about topics including Vance’s turn from oppositing to support Donald Trump, Vance dodging questions about Trump losing the 2020 election and more.
You can watch the full interview with JD Vance in the video above, or read it at the New York Times.
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