Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk defended Senator J.D. Vance on Sunday, alleging that Vice President Kamala Harris has intentions that could lead to the extinction of humans.

Mr. Vance made headlines last week after comments he made to Tucker Carlson in 2021 went viral. During that interview, Mr. Vance said “We are 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.”

He went on to say: “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?”

Donald Trump’s running mate responded to the criticism, posting a clip of Ms. Harris in which the Democrat says a slew of young people have told her they have “climate anxiety,” which has lead them to ponder whether “it makes sense for you to even think about having children.”

“It’s almost like these people don’t want young people starting families or something. Really weird stuff,” Mr. Vance said.

That prompted Mr. Musk to jump into the fray. “Shamala is an extinctionist. The natural extension of her philosophy would be a de facto holocaust for all of humanity!” he wrote on his social media platform.

Mr. Musk has previously declared that global overpopulation is hype and that people need to have more children. “It’s completely the opposite,” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2022. “If people don’t have more children, civilization is going to crumble. Mark my words.”