Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill. In today’s edition, political reporter Allan Smith examines how Donald Trump's new abortion stance takes a page from the GOP's 2022 midterm playbook.
Trump blamed Republican shortcomings in the midterms on “the abortion issue,” which he said on Truth Social last year was “poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on no exceptions, even in the case of rape, incest, or life of the mother, that lost large numbers of voters.” And in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” last year, he criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for signing a six-week ban into law.