JD Vance scrambled Friday to clean up former President Trump’s cryptic stance on Florida’s referendum to overturn the state’s near-total ban on abortion.
The Republican vice presidential nominee gave a less-than-clear response when asked how Trump will vote on the abortion rights proposal, which would overturn the Republican ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.
“He says he doesn’t like just six weeks. He obviously doesn’t like late-term abortion,” Vance, who has backed a nationwide abortion ban, told CNN. “I think, like a lot of Americans, the president is sort of somewhere else on this issue.”
The response came hours after Trump suggested he would vote in favor of the referendum, which will be on his Florida general election ballot and is opposed by the state’s GOP leaders.
“I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks,” Trump told NBC News.
Trump’s campaign quickly sought to roll back Trump’s comment, denying that he meant to say he would vote in favor of the ballot measure.
“Trump has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida, he simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short,” Karoline Leavitt, a campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Trump has repeatedly claimed he will announce his official stance on the referendum at some point in the future, a promise that he has repeatedly failed to fulfill.
The ongoing confusion over Trump’s position reflects the fact that abortion rights remains one of the most problematic issues for Trump and Republicans nationwide, one that Democrats are eager to exploit.
Trump boasts about appointing the right-wing Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and rolled back abortion rights, which was the law of the land for more than 50 years.
That led Republicans to enact abortion restrictions in states they control, putting more than an estimated one-third of of the country under bans. Many states, like Florida, bar all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a time frame when many people are not even aware they are pregnant.
Democrats and reproductive rights groups have responded by launching wildly successful efforts to enact referendums protecting abortion rights in blue and red states alike.
The Florida referendum, known as Amendment Four, requires the backing of 60% of voters. Polls show it has a solid chance of passing, even though Trump and Republicans are favored to carry the Sunshine State in November.