Senator JD Vance (R-OH) is under fire right now for inciting terror attacks on legal immigrants in Ohio by making unsubstantiated claims about them eating cats and dogs, but he’s also continuing to be deceptive about where the Republican Trump/Vance presidential ticket stand on a national abortion ban.
Speaking to on Meet the Press, Vance refused to say that Donald Trump would veto a national abortion ban if it came to his desk if he were to win the 2024 election, saying the issue is a hypothetical that they haven’t even discussed and “I’ve learned my lesson on speaking for the president.”
WATCH: On #MTP in August, @JDVance said Donald Trump would veto a national abortion ban.
But on the debate stage, Trump said he “wouldn’t have to” and that he and Vance had not discussed it.
Vance now tells MTP, “I’ve learned my lesson on speaking for the president.” pic.twitter.com/eV6wNuEmHI
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) September 15, 2024
Vance was asked about saying in August on Meet the Press that Donald Trump would veto a federal abortion ban, whereas on the debate stage, Trump said he “wouldn’t have to” and that he and Vance had not discussed it.
WELKER: Senator Vance, just to clarify once and for all, if Donald Trump were to be elected, if a federal abortion ban were to land on his desk, would he veto it?
VANCE: Kristen, as you saw the President say, we hadn’t discussed it. We still haven’t discussed it, by the way, because it’s not realistic. Kristen, I think that was the point that he made during the debate, is he’s been incredibly clear that he doesn’t support a national abortion ban.
He wants abortion policy to be made by the states, because he thinks, look, Alabama is going to make a different decision from California, and that’s okay…So I think President Trump has been clear a national abortion ban is not on the table. He wouldn’t support it. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t sign it. And I think, frankly, Kristen, it’s kind of a ridiculous hypothetical… His point is that it was a hypothetical, and not a hypothetical that has any chance of actually crossing his desk.
WELKER: I take your point, but, but just to put a fine point on this, you’re saying he wouldn’t support it. So would he veto it?
VANCE: I think that I’ve learned my lesson on speaking for the president before he and I have actually talked about an issue.
If the Trump/Vance ticket has an actual abortion policy, why won’t they tell voters what it is? If they don’t support a national abortion ban, why won’t they just say that and commit to vetoing any such legislation? This is a top issue in the 2024 election, and certainly they have a position, but Vance is claiming they haven’t even discussed it.
Trump has repeatedly taken credit for overturning Roe.
The problem for Trump is that in those state measures where voters actually get to weigh in rather than Republican politicians, voters have consistently supported abortion rights. Even some Republican voters voted against anti-abortion Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections and in November of 2023, red state Ohio, where JD Vance is a Senator, passed voters approved a constitutional amendment to protect access to abortion and other forms of reproductive health care.
One of the glaring issues with claiming individual states can decide whether women and girls have human rights is that Republicans are also suing individuals and passing laws to prohibit women and girls from traveling to a state where abortion is legal.
JD Vance has said he wants abortion to be illegal nationally and even wants to stop women from traveling for abortion. In 2022, Vance argued that the fact that people seeking abortions would travel from conservative states to liberal states necessitated federal action. “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally,” Vance said.
Listen here where JD Vance says the opposite of what he just said on MTP about California versus Ohio:
Unearthed audio: JD Vance calls for a “federal response” to block women in red states from traveling to another state to get an abortion pic.twitter.com/t9YAbFuoPc
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) July 26, 2024
In a May 2024 interview with KDKA News Trump said he was looking at restrictions on contraception but then walked it back after the interview was posted:
Trump was asked, “Do you support any restrictions on a person’s right to contraception?”
“We’re looking at that and I’m going to have a policy on that very shortly,” Trump responded, according to a video of the interview that was briefly posted online before it was supposed to air, then taken down.
Trump said in that interview that the contraception bans might work on a state by state basis. Contraception is, like abortion, often used to treat medical issues for women and girls, including excessive menstrual bleeding. So the idea that it could be banned in some states is concerning.
This is Trump speak: He often says two contradictory things to appeal to two different constituencies, sometimes even in the same sentence. If we just look at what Trump has actually done already as president, we see that the three Supreme Court justices he chose played a large part in overturning Roe v Wade, and Trump brags about this fact a lot.
Additionally, the conservative policy playbook Project 2025 calls for resurrecting the 1873 Comstock Act to target medication abortion, according to Leah Litman, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation’s playbook, but he has also been caught on camera praising Heritage and at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in writing it, according to a CNN analysis.
Trump has repeatedly tried to appease all voters and ended up angering the evangelicals who support him in part because he overturned Roe. So now both Republicans on the ticket are refusing to tell the voters exactly where they stand on abortion, an issue that can be life or death for pregnant people.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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