DeSantis calls out Trump’s abortion comment as ‘mistake’: ‘He’s a different candidate’ than in 2016

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, prior to unveiling his new power plan in Midland, Texas, criticized Donald Trump for calling Florida’s six-week abortion ban “terrible,” with DeSantis in a new interview accusing his 2024 Republican rival of being “a different candidate today than he was” in 2016.

“He claimed to be pro-life. He spoke at the March for Life and was waxing eloquently about how everybody counts,” DeSantis informed ABC News Live Prime anchor Linsey Davis in Texas, in a sit-down set to air Wednesday at 7 p.m EDT.

“For him to then attack people like Iowa, South Carolina, Florida, all these other states, I thought that was a big mistake,” DeSantis mentioned.

Trump, in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, went after DeSantis for signing the six-week abortion ban in Florida previous this yr.

“What he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake,” Trump mentioned. Instead, he mentioned, he would push for a compromise at the factor however didn’t specify a cutoff date on a ban he would favor.

DeSantis informed Davis that he thinks anti-abortion citizens — whom he and Trump are each looking for to woo, with DeSantis nonetheless trailing front-runner Trump through double-digits in the polls — will trust sharper restrictions.

More extensively, DeSantis argued that Trump’s rhetoric displays the previous president is softening his stances.

“I think he’s taking positions that I think are different from what he took in 2015 when he first came onto the scene. And I do think he’s a different candidate today than he was back then. And I think the one back then was probably closer to where Republican voters want to be than the latest iteration,” he mentioned.

Asked if he believes Trump is actually adversarial to abortion, DeSantis mentioned, “Well, you tell me.”

“I think that if you have something where you have a baby that has a detectable heartbeat, if you’re pro-life, you would want to say that there should be protections there,” he mentioned. “And if he’s saying, ‘That’s a terrible thing’ — I know most pro-life voters would think that he’s wrong.”

Abortion bans at six weeks are most often when cardiac process is detected in fetuses.

Trump’s feedback have sparked backlash from different anti-abortion leaders in the Republican Party, together with Kim Reynolds, the governor of Iowa, the state that votes first in the race for the GOP nomination.

A Trump marketing campaign spokesman mentioned in a remark, in section: “President Trump’s unmatched record speaks for itself.”

The spokesman singled out Trump’s function in finishing the abortion protections of Roe v. Wade, thru his Supreme Court appointees, and added that “there has been no bigger advocate for the movement than President Trump.”

ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa and Soo Rin Kim contributed to this document.