Initiation into former President Donald Trump’s inner circle involves dishonest establishment figures making you the object of a new hoax.

Amid a whirlwind of surreal events over the past two weeks, Trump’s selection of Republican Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio as his 2024 running mate flew a bit under the radar, though that did not prevent the emergence of an establishment-fueled hoax about Vance’s 2021 “childless cat ladies” remarks.

Impervious to truth and eager to sow discord, establishment figures have repeated Vance’s comments while omitting crucial context.

Thursday on the social media platform X, however, Trump 2024 national press secretary Karoline Leavitt shared a 30-second clip that provided said context and subsequently went viral, thus proving once again that sharing evidence far and wide constitutes the most effective antidote to toxic liberal gaslighting.

The controversy over Vance’s comments began in earnest on Monday, when liberal journalist and former federal prosecutor Ron Filipkowski posted to X a 28-second clip of Vance speaking in 2021 with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

“We’re effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, 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,” Vance said.

The then-candidate for U.S. Senate identified Vice President Kamala Harris, presumptive 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, along with Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, as present and future leaders of the Democratic Party who, because they have no children, “don’t really have a direct stake” in the future of the United States.

“JD Vance says women who haven’t given birth like Kamala Harris are ‘childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives,’ and have ‘no direct stake’ in America,” Filipkowski wrote in an accompanying post.

That is, of course, not what Vance said. But the dishonest Filipkowski posted it anyway.

JD Vance says women who haven’t given birth like Kamala Harris are “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives,” and have “no direct stake” in America. pic.twitter.com/3DJY3pQTGe

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 22, 2024

As one would expect, prominent women — deprived of context by Filipkowski’s editing — jumped at the chance to signal their virtue.

According to USA Today, actress Jennifer Aniston took to Instagram to chastise Vance for something he never said.

“All I can say is… 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.

Meanwhile, nominal Republican Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona, joined the chorus of faux indignation.

“One of my best friends did rounds and rounds of unsuccessful IVF wanting to have a child. It is still painful to talk about. This ‘childless women’ comment by JD Vance has made so many waves with so many different friends of mine for it’s insensitivity and cruelty to women,” McCain posted on Wednesday.

One of my best friends did rounds and rounds of unsuccessful IVF wanting to have a child. It is still painful to talk about.

This “childless women” comment by JD Vance has made so many waves with so many different friends of mine for it’s insensitivity and cruelty to women. https://t.co/6FfagKwzAV

— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) July 24, 2024

To recap, Vance specifically used the phrase “miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.” In other words, he clearly meant to refer to a certain kind of person who remained childless by choice. He even mentioned Buttigieg, which proved that he did not have only women in mind.

Filipkowski then distorted Vance’s words to mean not women who regret a choice but all “women who haven’t given birth.” Aniston and McCain ran with Filipkowski’s lie.

On Thursday, however, Leavitt responded directly to McCain.

Leavitt’s 30-second clip, which had more than 3.8 million views on X as of Friday morning, showed Vance speaking to the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute in 2021. The comments he made there refer the ones he made in his interview with Carlson.

“A lot of people are unable to have kids for very complicated and important reasons,” Vance told ISI event attendees.

“The target of these remarks is not them. It’s important to point that out. There have always been people like that, who even though they would like to have kids [are] unable to have them. Let’s set them to the side,” he added moments later.

In other words, Vance specifically excluded from his remarks the unfortunate and heartbroken women to whom Aniston and McCain referred.

“As a new mom, my heart aches for women who are unable to bear children. @JDVance words are being taken out of context and unfairly attacked,” Leavitt wrote in an accompanying post.

As a new mom, my heart aches for women who are unable to bear children. @JDVance words are being taken out of context and unfairly attacked.

Here are his full comments from 2021:

“A lot of people are unable to have kids for very complicated and important reasons…there are… https://t.co/Q0yfpQWNfc pic.twitter.com/JOWbiIQ7Qf

— Karoline Leavitt (@kleavittnh) July 25, 2024

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that 15 years ago I also participated in an ISI event. There, I heard former Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes make remarks similar to Vance’s.

At the time, I took offense to Keyes’ remarks. After all, years of chasing career-related goals had trained me to bristle at any reference to my own childlessness.

Today, however, I recognize that Keyes had it right. And so did Vance.

The ubiquitous modern lie that human beings can best fill their lives with meaning by pursuing professional advancement instead of building a family has left me and many others I know from my generation facing a lonely old age.

I made the choice not to have children, so I harbor no resentment.

But that gets exactly to Vance’s point: Others have made the same choice and have experienced deep misery as a result. Those people, hampered by a leftist indoctrination that encourages resentment on Marxist ideological grounds and unwilling to confront the terrible consequences of their choices, have no business spreading the fulfillment-through-career lie to a new generation.

Perhaps, therefore, we could stop with the hoaxes and start taking seriously the question of what actually makes life meaningful.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.