Republican Tudor Dixon, who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Michigan last year, says former President Donald Trump privately told her to ease off on extreme positions on abortion during the campaign, reported POLITICO on Wednesday.
"'You came to me and you said, ‘You got to talk differently about abortion.’ And we could not pivot, we could not pivot in time," she said during an interview with Trump on her podcast, which aired Tuesday," reported Kelly Garrity. "Dixon, a conservative media personality who has not held public office, was bolstered by Trump’s endorsement in her efforts to unseat incumbent Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in the swing state."
The Michigan governor's race was dominated by abortion following the Supreme Court's invalidation of Roe v. Wade, and voters were driven to the polls in part by a successful ballot referendum to codify abortion rights statewide.
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Dixon came under fire during the campaign for declining to say whether she would support allowing rape survivors to get abortions. She later acknowledged in interviews that the abortion issue likely played a role in her 10-point loss.
During the campaign, Dixon was also heavily criticized for her time hosting a show on the right-wing network Real America's Voice, where she pushed a number of racist conspiracy theories and defended the act of wearing blackface.
Dixon was not the only painful loss for Michigan Republicans in the 2022 election; Democrats also held the offices of attorney general and secretary of state, and gained control of the state legislature after years of Republican rule.
