A registered Democrat, he told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday he was pro-choice, and drew immediate pushback. “I believe in law”, Flynn told Fox News.
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The Susan B. Anthony List says Trump has “pledged to advance and sign into law the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, defund Planned Parenthood, and appoint pro-life Justices to the Supreme Court”.
UPDATE: At midday today, Flynn reversed course and claimed he is a “pro-life Democrat” who wants to change the law on abortion.
Flynn is the only one of the possible vice-presidential picks Trump is considering who is not pro-life.
During an interview yesterday, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a potential vice presidential pick for Donald Trump, said he supports abortion – saying it’s a woman’s decision. “I don’t think there should be religious and racial tests for people”, he said. That angers Dump-Trump conservatives among Republicans already gathering for next week’s convention. Trump is expected to announce his decision at week’s end.
But even Flynn, in an interview with Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan in early May, said that he would not condemn Trump’s ban on Muslim immigration.
(Fox News reported Monday he has clarified that statement, insisting he is “pro-life.”) But as The Post examined in March, a major political party also has not had a general or admiral as a vice presidential candidate on its ticket in the modern era.
“All I would say is that I have been honored to serve my country for the past three decades and look forward to serving in other ways now that I am retired from the U.S. Army”, Flynn told New York Post. The short list is reportedly down to just a few names – including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. This vision of an America pursuing its goals unconstrained by the norms of worldwide law is very much in keeping with Trump’s radical nationalism.
Trump was careful not to eliminate Flynn, but explained his reasons for prioritizing political experience over military credentials.
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But this might give Flynn and Trump something to bond over, since the presumptive Republican nominee also faced criticism for his comments on abortion in March – but in his case, many conservatives felt he went too far. A former federal prosecutor, he enthusiastically played the role of attack dog, ripping into likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and showed that he would bring law-and-order machismo to the Trump ticket. “I was against the war in Iraq from the start”. More importantly, he noted that, like LeMay, he is pro-choice, a position anathema to most of the Republican convention-goers who would have to validate his selection at the convention.
