In an interview on “Meet the Press,” Trump said he would “sit down with both sides” to work out how to limit abortion access: “Both sides are going to like me.”
Former president Donald Trump, the front-runner in the GOP presidential primary, said a state abortion law signed by his top challenger, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), which bans the procedure after six weeks, is “terrible.”
In April, DeSantis signed the controversial law, which will go into effect if the Florida Supreme Court upholds the state’s 15-week ban on abortion that he signed into law last spring. At a hearing this month, the Florida justices appeared open to upholding the limiting ban.
Trump, in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” criticized DeSantis for being “willing to sign a five-week and six-week ban.”
“I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake,” Trump said.
DeSantis’s six-week ban — which includes exceptions for rape, incest, medical emergencies and “fatal fetal abnormalities” — would outlaw the procedure in Florida before many people know they’re pregnant.
The new host of “Meet the Press,” Kristen Welker, asked Trump if he’d sign federal legislation that would ban abortion at 15 weeks, a limit that antiabortion groups and some lawmakers have rallied behind.
Trump said no, and said he’d seek to negotiate with Democrats on the issue.
“Let me just tell you what I’d do: I’m going to come together with all groups, and we’re going to have something that’s acceptable,” he said.
Trump declined to say what time frame he thinks is appropriate for an abortion ban and instead insisted that he would “sit down with both sides and I’d negotiate something, and we’ll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years.”
“Both sides are going to like me,” he said.
