Trump Undermines Vance on Abortion Ban Veto: ‘I Didn’t Discuss It With JD’

“Nobody speaks for Donald J. Trump except for Donald J. Trump.”

It’s a line Senator JD Vance of Ohio has used to defend his running mate, and on Tuesday evening, he ran headlong into experiencing it for himself.

During the debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump disavowed a pledge that Mr. Vance made on his behalf late last month on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the former president would veto a national abortion ban if elected.

“I didn’t discuss it with JD,” Mr. Trump said on the debate stage. “And I don’t mind if he has a certain view. But I think he was speaking for me — but I really didn’t.”

Mr. Trump, reaching to shelter himself from his vulnerabilities on the issue of abortion, in effect left his running mate out in the cold — muddling his campaign’s talking points on the issue while undermining the credibility of Mr. Vance, who has tried to flesh out Mr. Trump’s policy positions in interviews and campaign appearances.

And even though Mr. Vance, the former president’s most prolific surrogate, had described Mr. Trump as “explicitly” saying he would veto an abortion ban, it was Mr. Vance who fell on his sword after the debate.

He said in an interview with CNN about two hours after Mr. Trump’s remarks that he had not spoken to Mr. Trump about a veto. Then he returned to attack-dog mode, calling the question an “absurd hypothetical.”

He pivoted to Mr. Trump’s explanation that it didn’t matter if he would veto a bill banning abortion because the legislation would never get that far, saying that it would get “maybe 10 percent” support in Congress. A majority of House Republicans this year cosponsored the Life at Conception Act, which would ban nearly all abortions nationwide.

“It’s a difference of semantics,” Mr.