Ex-White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said Friday in an interview that when it comes to former President Trump’s “contradictory” stance on the issue of abortion, he knows “he’s in trouble.”
“He’s done a very good job of the last nine years of saying two contradictory things at the exact same time and giving enough food for everybody at the table,” Scaramucci told host Alex Marquardt on CNN’s “The Situation Room.”
“He’s in trouble. He knows it,” he continued later. “And the interesting conversation you guys were having before the break, it’s going to be very hard for women, even conservative women, to give up their reproductive freedoms to [Ohio Sen.] J.D. Vance [R] and Donald Trump. And he knows that.”
Scaramucci added, “He’s got very good political instincts. So, this is a vexing problem for him right now.”
The remarks come after Trump said he would not vote for an upcoming Florida ballot measure that would prevent future Sunshine State legislation limiting abortion access and overturn the state’s current ban on the procedure — which bars abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
The former president previously indicated the length of the ban was “too short.”
“I think six weeks … you need more time than six weeks. I’ve disagreed with that right from the early primaries when I heard about it, I disagreed with it,” Trump, the GOP nominee for president, told Fox News’s Bryan Llenas Friday. “At the same time, the Democrats are radical because the nine months is just a ridiculous situation.”
“All of that stuff is unacceptable, so I will be voting no for that reason,” he added.
Scaramucci also suggested that his former boss “gaslit” people through his wavering stance on the issue.
“That’s what he’s doing right now,” the former White House official said. “He’s shotgunning out statements and words.”
“The conservatives in this party are calling him up saying ‘You can’t do that. Many of these pro-life conservatives will not come out to vote for you. You have a low ceiling at 47.5 percent. You’ve never been able to punch through that. You need every one of these votes,'” he continued. “And so he equivocates and goes back out there and says what he said today.”
Despite the push back on the issue, Trump has taken credit for the overturn of Roe v. Wade, which returned the issue of abortion access back to the states. Earlier this month the former president said he has “no regrets” that the GOP-majority Supreme Court justices ruled against the federal right to abortion.
The Hill has reached out to Vance and the Trump campaign.
