Trump campaign defends abortion comments: He was speaking off the cuff

The Trump campaign on Thursday defended the Republican presidential front-runner’s comments that women should be punished for having illegal abortions, saying that Trump was merely speaking “off the cuff.”

{mosads}In an interview on Fox News’s “The Kelly File,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson was asked why the candidate was so prone to misspeaking.

“Well, I say when you are a political candidate for eight months, you are speaking off the cuff.” she responded. “That’s one of his appeals, that he’s not a scripted politician.“

“With regard to this specific account with abortion, Mr. Trump did provide a statement, two actually, one on the proposed ban because at first, Megyn, the media frenzy was that Trump called for a ban on abortion, which in fact he did not,” Pierson continued.

“The second statement was with regard to women, where he wanted to clarify that he does not support punishing women for having an illegal abortion.”

Pierson also sought to clarify what Trump meant when he said that women should be punished for having illegal abortions.

“Mr. Trump was speaking about the legality here,” she said. “This was a hypothetical context of something happening that was illegal. Mr. Trump was just re-stating, ‘Yes, if something’s illegal, they should be punished.’ That’s why he clarified, for distinguishing the difference between the woman and the actual person committing the procedure that was not legal.”

In an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Tuesday, Trump was asked what a ban on abortion would look like.

“The answer is that here has to be some form of punishment,” the former reality television star responded.

“For the woman?” Matthews asked.

“Yeah there has to be some form,” Trump said.