DeSantis blasts Trump on abortion: 'Did he flip-flop?'

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday asserted that former President Donald Trump is not pro-life and suggested he flip-flopped on the matter after leaving office.

In a CNN town hall in Iowa, DeSantis contrasted Trump's comments at the March for Life while president in which he backed protections for unborn children and his later comments calling certain abortion restrictions a "terrible thing."

"How do you reconcile those two views? Did he flip flop? Did he not believe it at the time?" he said, before highlighting Trump's call for addressing abortion at the federal law. "What he wants to do is find a time ... have that be the limit, but then override any protections that states have done that are gonna be more than that."

"Do you think Donald Trump is not pro-life?" moderator Kaitlan Collins asked. "Course not!" he replied. "When you're saying that pro-life protections are a terrible thing, by definition you are not pro-life."

DeSantis insisted that he viewed the abortion debate as one in which the states have primacy.

"Clearly, states have the primary role in this," DeSantis said. "We'll be somebody that will defend, particularly the rights of states to be able to enact pro-life protections."

Trump, for his part, sat for an interview with NBC's Kristen Welker in which he expressed a desire to reach a compromise with the Democrats, saying "[w]hat's going to happen is your going to come up with a number of weeks or months. You're going to come up with a number that's going to make people happy." He was hesitant to back a 15-week federal ban during that exchange, which prompted outrage from anti-abortion groups.

He later insisted that Republicans needed to improve their messaging on the issue and touted his appointment of three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, which established the constitutional right to an abortion.

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter.