Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff said former President Trump’s vow to protect women “is yet more lies and more gaslighting,” in a Sunday interview on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki.”
In a discussion about abortion rights, Emhoff said it was “wrong” that his 83-year-old mother “is somehow going to enjoy more rights” than his daughter, and he blamed the situation on Trump.
“This is all because of Donald Trump. He ran on a platform of women should be punished for seeking an abortion. He said that. There's video. He ran on a platform of appointing Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, They did just that. And he is for a national abortion ban,” Emhoff told Psaki.
“Make no mistake, where he says I will be the protector of women, that is yet more lies and more gaslighting,” he continued.
The former president has not backed a national abortion ban, instead embracing a “states’ rights” approach to setting abortion policy nationwide. Trump’s campaign has said that the former president would not sign a federal abortion ban bill, if it arrived on his desk as president. On the debate stage, however, Trump avoided answering directly whether he would veto a bill that banned abortion nationwide, instead stressing that such a bill is unlikely to get through Congress and land on the president’s desk.
Trump’s campaign said in a statement that Trump would not sign a federal ban on abortion, when reached for comment in response to Emhoff’s remarks.
"President Trump has long been consistent in supporting the rights of states to make decisions on abortion and has been very clear that he will NOT sign a federal ban when he is back in the White House. President Trump also supports universal access to contraception and IVF,” Karoline Leavitt, the national press secretary for Trump’s campaign, said in a statement provided to The Hill.
Trump, at a rally last week, told Pennsylvania women that “I am your protector,” and said, if elected, he would make sure women were happy and “no longer thinking about abortion.”
He said women are poorer, less safe, less healthy, and paying more than they were four years ago, adding, “I will fix all of that, and fast, and at long last this nation, and national nightmare, will end. It will end.”
“Because I am your protector. I want to be your protector,” he continued. “As president, I have to be your protector. I hope you don’t make too much of it. I hope the fake news doesn’t go, ‘Oh he wants to be their protector.’ Well, I am. As president, I have to be your protector.”
Trump has had trouble winning over female voters in each of his past two presidential campaigns, and polls have shown that he once again trails Harris, who has rapidly consolidated support among female voters since she replaced President Biden atop the Democratic ticket. Harris has made reproductive rights central to her campaign, blaming Trump for the end of Roe v. Wade and the restrictive abortion bans subsequently passed by states across the country.
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