Voters can’t trust Trump on abortion, Whitmer says
Mich. governor among Biden surrogates visiting Arizona
PHOENIX – Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, appearing in Phoenix, said voters “cannot trust” former President Donald Trump on the issue of abortion.
She took direct aim at Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee who has signaled that he will soon announce his policy position on the issue.
“No matter what Donald Trump tells people, he is the reason we are in this fight. He is the reason we have a majority on the United States Supreme Court that eviscerated the Roe standard,” Whitmer said Wednesday, referencing the highest court’s decision to overturn the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade.
“We cannot trust what they say because we’ve seen extremist Republicans all across this country try to chip away at abortion rights,” Whitmer said to an audience of several dozen supporters in a downtown Phoenix cafe.
Whitmer, a co-chair of President Joe Biden’s reelection bid, came to Arizona to drum up support for the president.
Arizona is a key battleground for the presidential race. In 2020, Biden beat Trump in the state by around 10,000 votes – less than the number of fans who attend an average Major League Baseball game.
The Biden campaign, as a result, has scheduled visits for the president and a parade of surrogates through Arizona.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes also attended the event Wednesday. Mayes has said she would never prosecute abortion cases regardless of what the courts determine Arizona law is. In her remarks, she harshly criticized Arizona’s Republican-led law that currently bans abortion toward the beginning of the second trimester of pregnancy.
“Remember what the stakes are here,” Mayes said. “We have a 15-week abortion ban today with no exceptions for rape or incest.”
In her remarks, Whitmer focused on the threat that she believes Trump and the Republican Party pose to reproductive freedom.
“So what on Earth is ‘that woman from Michigan’ doing in Arizona?” she said, referencing the dismissive phrase Trump has used to describe her.
“The biggest and most important economic decision a person will make in the course of their lifetime is what we’re talking about today,” Whitmer said. “I’m here to give you a little hope, and to talk about how high the stakes are in this election, this national election that’s looming.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Biden has leaned on Whitmer to mobilize voters on his behalf in the swing state of Michigan.
The Michigan governor rose to national prominence in 2020 when Trump criticized her COVID-19 policies as overly strict.
Her vocal advocacy to reverse Michigan’s nearly century-old state abortion ban was credited with helping Democrats win control of both the governor’s office and the state legislature in 2022, the first time the party had done so in decades.