Lindsey Graham pressed by CNN over claim Trump would protect reproductive freedom

Senator Lindsey Graham found himself forced into an age-old position — explaining something Donald Trump had said — on Sunday as he appeared on CNN’s State of the Union.

The South Carolina senator is one of Trump’s continued allies in the Senate, though he has been subject to boos at Trump’s rallies and the occasional put-down from Magaworld. On Sunday, he was interviewed by Jake Tapper on CNN and asked about a comment Trump had made on Truth Social following his live response to Kamala Harris’s primetime speech last week at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Posting on Truth Social, Trump made several dozen short remarks during Harris’s speech — which ended up being quite a bit shorter than his own 92-minute address to July’s Republican National Convention. In one post the next morning, he would then go on to claim that his administration “will be great for women and their reproductive rights”.

Graham was asked by Tapper how the former president’s second term in the White House would fit that description: “I don’t know, you’d have to ask him,” he demurred.

He then did what Trump campaign officials likely wished he would not have, and segued into an argument in favor of a national abortion ban for so-called “late-term” abortions. Trump has said repeatedly that he does not support a national ban on abortion even as he has taken credit for the end of federal protections; Democrats argue he is lying.

.<a rel=«nofollow» target="_blank" href=«https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC?ref_src=» https:>@LindseyGrahamSC

: “The people who broke into the Capitol and assaulted police officers should go to jail. They committed a crime.” pic.twitter.com/y0cX1drgj3

The latter half of Trump’s claim from Truth Social, at a minimum,