Back in the early 1990s, in an episode that was very much a precursor for the future, then-Vice President Dan Quayle got into a feud with a fictional character, Murphy Brown.
Brown, played by Candice Bergen, was a network news journalist on the CBS TV series of the same name from 1988 to 1998. In 1992, the series did a storyline in which the Murphy character, who was unmarried, became pregnant and chose to raise her child as a single mother. That May, amidst the presidential campaign, Vice President Quayle gave a speech in which he ripped the character for “mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone.”
This was a significant controversy throughout that summer, and when the series returned in the fall, it incorporated the vice president’s comments into the show:
“Today, a Republican candidate for vice president would never attack a woman for having kids, so as they say, my work here is done. Meow.”
As for Dan Quayle, he made a brief cameo in the Trump era, when his fellow Republican vice president from Indiana, Mike Pence, reached out to him prior to January 6, and asked his advice on whether he had the power as vice president to reject Democratic electoral votes.
“Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away,’ Quayle told Pence, according to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s 2021 book, Peril. “‘I do know the position you’re in,’ Quayle responded. ‘I also know what the law is. You listen to the parliamentarian. That’s all you do. You have no power.’”