Sen. JD Vance addresses Trump's stance on a federal abortion ban: 'I've learned my lesson on speaking for the president'

Sen. JD Vance says he’s "learned [his] lesson" about speaking on behalf of his running mate, former President Donald Trump, regarding abortion policy.

In August, the vice presidential nominee stated that if Trump were elected, he would veto any national abortion ban that crossed his desk.

“If you’re not supporting it as the president of the United States, you fundamentally have to veto it,” he told Meet the Press host Kristen Welker at the time. “[Trump] explicitly said that he would.”

However, during his Sept. 8 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump clarified that he had never discussed the issue with Vance, saying, “I don’t mind if he has a certain view, but I think he was speaking for me … but I really didn’t [say that].”

Vance retracted his earlier remarks in a new interview with Welker on Meet the Press this Sunday, admitting that he and Trump “still haven’t discussed it” because a national abortion ban “is not realistic.”

“I think President Trump has been clear: A national abortion ban is not on the table,” Vance told Welker in his latest appearance on the Sunday morning news show. “He wouldn’t support it. He wouldn’t sign it. And I think frankly, Kristen, it’s kind of a ridiculous hypothetical because if a national abortion ban was brought before the United States Senate right now, it would get, at best, 10 senators out of 100.”

Vance explained that Trump “wants abortion policy to be made by the states because he thinks, look, Alabama is going to make a different decision from California — and that’s OK. We’re a big country. We can disagree.”

When asked again whether Trump would veto such a ban, Vance stood firm.

“I think that I’ve learned my lesson on speaking for the president before he and I have actually talked about an issue,” he said. “What he has said at the debate, which is quite explicit, is he doesn’t support a national ban. He thinks it’s ridiculous to talk about vetoing a piece of legislation that isn’t going to come before the president in the first place.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Vance addressed far-right activist Laura Loomer’s recent comments about Harris's Indian heritage, which have sparked backlash from both Republicans and Democrats. “I don’t like those comments,” said Vance, whose wife, Usha, is the daughter of Indian immigrants. “What Laura said about Kamala Harris is not where our focus should be. We need to concentrate on the policy and the issues.”

The Ohio senator also doubled down when asked about pushing an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, allegedly eating pets, rejecting claims that the accusations are baseless. Last week bomb threats to the city resulted in the closure of multiple city, county and school buildings.

"I hear you saying that they’re baseless, but I’m not repeating them because I invented them out of thin air," Vance told Welker. "I’m repeating them because my constituents are saying these things are happening.”

He added, “These rumors are out there because constituents are seeing it with their own eyes,” before going on to criticize the media for challenging his assertions.

“I trust my constituents more than I trust the American media, which has shown no interest in what's going on in Springfield until we started sharing cat memes online,” said Vance.

Vance echoed those sentiments in a separate interview on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, claiming to host Dana Bash that he has “firsthand accounts” from constituents who told him directly that Haitian immigrants are eating their pets.

“The American Media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about a cat meme,” he said. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people then that's what I'm going to do.”

Meanwhile, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine defended Haitian immigrants on ABC’s This Week Sunday, stressing to host Martha Raddatz that the “Haitians who are in Springfield are legal” and that they “came to Springfield to work.”

“This is a piece of garbage that was simply not true. There’s no evidence of this at all,” DeWine said of the conspiracy theory, which first began as a Facebook post.

Erika Lee, the Springfield resident who initially posted about the false claim, told NBC News on Friday that she had no firsthand knowledge of the alleged incident and now regrets the impact it has caused.

“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” she said. “I feel for the Haitian community. If I was in the Haitians’ position, I’d be terrified too, worried that somebody’s going to come after me because they think I’m hurting something that they love and that, again, that’s not what I was trying to do.”