Donald Trump on Thursday night acknowledged that he may have misspoken while discussing whether women who seek abortions should be punished if the procedure is banned.
“It could be that I misspoke but this was a long, convoluted subject,” Trump told Fox News’ Eric Bolling.
During a town hall on MSNBC, Trump said that if abortion were illegal, then women who get abortions should be punished. He quickly walked his comments back in a statement saying that doctors would be punished for performing abortions if the procedure were illegal, not women.
On Thursday, Trump repeatedly blamed the length and confusing nature of the discussion about abortion for his comments about penalties for illegal abortions.
“This was a long, convoluted question. This was a long discussion. And they just cut it out, and frankly it was extremely — it was really convoluted,” he said.
He later added that it was a “very long, convoluted discussion, which frankly they don’t run on television because it’s too long.”
MSNBC said in a statement to Mediaite that Trump’s conversation with Chris Matthews was not edited and was aired in full.
“The town hall interview with Donald Trump was taped in advance and then aired in its entirety. Absolutely no part of the exchange between Trump and Chris Matthews was edited out,” an MSNBC spokesman said.
Watch Trump’s interview via Fox News:
