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.

The latter half of Trump’s claim from Truth Social, at a minimum, is questionable. The ex-president has repeatedly taken credit for the nationwide rollback of federal abortion protections which occurred in 2022 when a conservative Supreme Court majority including three justices appointed by Trump overturned Roe v Wade. That decision has led to a wave of state-led efforts to restrict abortion, some of which have caused cases of pregnant women being denied critical care in hospitals fearful of running afoul of the law.

Trump and his wing of the GOP have attempted a delicate dance around the issue even as Trump himself has grown increasingly confident about signaling his role in Roe’s downfall. The party, at his campaign’s behest, scrubbed support for a national abortion banfrom their platform earlier this year.

Graham himself famously declared Trump persona non grata in the Republican Party in the immediate wake of the January 6 siege on Congress, committed by the ex-president’s supporters and aimed at blocking lawmakers from certifying the 2020 election. But Graham and many other Republicans came back around and rejoined Magaworld, even at the expense of having to face uncomfortable questions about that day.

That happened to Graham on Sunday as Tapper also questioned him about the ongoing lionization of January 6 rioters by the Republican base, pointing to a “January 6 awards gala” set to be held by some right-wing Maga groups. Former President Donald Trump has said on the campaign trail that he supports pardons and official apologies for some Americans charged and convicted in the January 6 attack, despite dozens of police officers being battered and injured during the assault.

The South Carolina senator argued that any rioter convicted of attacking a police officer should go to jail, though he appeared to leave room for others to be let off.

“The people who broke into the Capitol and assaulted police officers should go to jail. They committed a crime,” said Graham, while adding that “both parties” needed to “knock off” the normalization of political violence.