JD Vance Desperately Tries to Clean Up Trump’s Apparent Support for Florida Abortion Amendment

Trump said he thinks Florida's six-week ban is "too short." On Friday morning, Vance attempted damage control by saying Trump's been "very consistent" with that opinion. Let's explore that...

By Lauren Tousignant  |  August 30, 2024 | 3:53pm
Photo: Getty Images Politics 2024 Election
JD Vance Desperately Tries to Clean Up Trump’s Apparent Support for Florida Abortion Amendment

UPDATE: 6:30 p.m.: Ahead of his rally in Johnstown, PA on Friday night, and one day after telling NBC News that a six-week abortion ban is “too short,” Trump came out against Florida’s Amendment 4. “So I think six weeks, you need more time than six weeks,” Trump told a Fox News reporter, adding that the “democrats are radical” and that, in Minnesota and “other states,” you can execute a baby after it’s born. “And all of that stuff is unacceptable, so I’ll be voting no for the reason.” Alrighty then. Our original story is below.

You know the internal polling numbers are bad when former president Donald Trump starts dropping comments that sound something like he supports abortion rights—which is exactly what happened Thursday when NBC News asked Trump how he’s going to vote on Florida’s Amendment 4, which would overturn the state’s six-week abortion ban and enshrine a right to abortion in the state constitution. Trump, who’s a Florida resident, said, “Well I think the six week is too short, it has to be more time, and I’ve told them I want more weeks.” The reporter then asked if he’ll vote “in favor” of Amendment 4, to which Trump responded, “I’m voting that, I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks.”

Obviously, the only way to vote for “more weeks” is by voting “yes” on Amendment 4, which would put Trump at huge odds with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and pretty much every GOP lawmaker in the state. Needless to say, the Trump camp immediately went into anti-abortion damage control, saying that he never said how he’d vote on Florida’s ballot initiative. “He simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short,” national press secretary Karole Leavitt said in a statement.

Then, on Friday morning, JD Vance scurried onto CNN to try and further clarify Trump’s remarks. And he did not do a good job! Specifically, CNN anchor John Berman asked Vance, “How can you vote for more than six weeks without voting for the amendment?” It’s a tricky question, but the answer is, “You can’t, Trump supports Amendment 4.” Vance, of course, did not say that. Let’s break down his evasive, repetitive remarks.

JD VANCE: “I think all the president’s saying, and of course, he’s going to make his own announcement on how he’s going to vote on the Florida bill, is that he thinks there should be more than six weeks.”

Yes. This is literally what Trump said when he said, “I think the six week is too short, it has to be more time.” Thank you for repeating it, I guess.

“He’s been very consistent in that. He says he doesn’t like just six weeks, he obviously doesn’t like late-term abortion, I think like a lot of Americans, the president is sort of somewhere else on this issue.” 

Two big wrongs here. First, Trump has not been “very consistent” in saying he doesn’t support a six-week abortion ban. Yes, in September 2023, he called Florida’s six-week ban “a terrible mistake” and in April, he said the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to allow a Civil War-era abortion ban to take effect went too far. But, in February, the New York Times reported that Trump’s been telling his advisors that he likes the idea of a 16-week national abortion, and in March, he said he’d support a 15-week federal ban.

But, in 2017 and 2018, Trump supported the House bill to ban abortion nationwide at 20 weeks and then urged the Senate to pass it. (It didn’t.) Then came the 2022 midterms, in which Republicans performed poorly despite maintaining control of the House. Exit polls in battleground states showed that voters ranked abortion as their most important issue, and Trump quickly blamed the midterm results on “the abortion issue” and said it was “poorly handled by many Republicans.”

And if we wanna go way back, in October 1990, Trump told NBC News that he’s “Very pro-choice. I hate the concept of abortion. … I just believe in choice.” So you could use a lot of descriptions to classify Trump’s opinions on abortion—like flip-flopper, opportunistic, or desperate— but “very consistent” is not one of them.

This brings us to our second big wrong: “A lot” of Americans are not “sort of somewhere else on this issue.” Most Americans support abortion rights. If they didn’t, Republicans like Trump wouldn’t be breaking their necks to try and Yurchenko double-pike back their previous anti-abortion comments.

“He’s also said he wants abortion policy to be made by the states themselves individually and not by the national government.” 

Again, he started saying this after polls showed that the majority of Americans support abortion rights. Not to mention that he was the president who appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court so that they’d overturn a national right to abortion. For more, see above.

“I think that’s the most important thing here, he’s, of course, opining on this as a Florida resident, but when it comes to national policy John, President Trump has been extremely consistent that he wants abortion policy to be made by the states.”

John is the name of the CNN anchor Vance was speaking with, so he at least got one thing right.

“Florida, California, Ohio, they’re going to have different approaches, that’s OK. What he wants is to focus on eliminating inflation, bringing down the cost of groceries and housing, and closing down that southern border that Kamala Harris opened up. That’s where he’s focused, and that’s where we’ll continue to focus for the remainder of the campaign.” 

Well, banning abortion is not taking a “different approach,” it’s revoking a woman’s right to make decisions about her body. And it’s not OK that women in one state have reproductive freedom and women in another state don’t have reproductive freedom. This is the most fucking infuriating GOP talking point, IMO.

And despite Republicans insisting that Harris is a failed “border czar,” Harris was never in charge of the border, let alone being the one who “opened [it] up,” whatever that means. Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, and Xavier Becerra, the secretary of health and human services, are in charge of the border. Biden, specifically, tasked Harris with leading “diplomatic efforts to reduce poverty, violence and corruption in Central America’s Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, as well as engage with Mexico on the issue” according to Reuters. But good luck trying to explain what “reducing poverty and corruption” is to a Republican!

Berman then tried to refocus Vance by asking, “He [Trump] said he was going to vote for more than six weeks, so what’s your understanding of how he will do that?” 

“Well I think what he’s saying is he doesn’t like doing it at just six weeks, obviously he’s going to make his own judgment on how he’ll ultimately vote on the amendment.”

Wow, do you think he’s going to eventually say how he’ll ultimately vote on the issue???????

“I think he’s probably making an argument about how he feels about the issue.”

-______________________-

“He’s not making some proclamation about how he’s going to vote on the amendment, and of course, they clarified afterward that he wasn’t making an explicit determination of how he’s going to vote or announcing anything.”

Vance probably thinks he’s doing a great job evading the real question here. I bet he fancies himself Richard Gere as Billy Flynn in Chicago’s “Tapdancing Around the Witness.” But he’s not Billy Flynn in Chicago, he’s more like Raygun, the viral Olympic “breaker” from Australia.

“Look, the president, I’m sure, will tell the American people how he’s going to vote on it eventually, but he wasn’t making an announcement last night.”

It’s been a long-ass summer of Trump “eventually” telling the American people how he’s going to vote on Amendment 4, that’s for sure. Which seems like proof that he clearly feels he’s in a lot of fucking trouble come November.

The interview continued for another minute, in which Vance said more of the same, and also threw in some buzzwords like “inflation” and “affording groceries.” It was weird.

 
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