Planned Parenthood gained an unlikely new booster on Tuesday morning:Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.

The billionaire told Chris Cuomo on CNN’s New Day that he opposes federal funding going to Planned Parenthood to pay for abortions, but that he’s okay with tax dollars going to the group to pay for other services that it provides.

“The problem that I have with Planned Parenthood is the abortion situation. It is like an abortion factory, frankly,” Trump began. “And you can’t have it. And you just shouldn’t be funding it. That should not be funded by the government, and I feel strongly about that.”

Then Cuomo asked Trump if he could support funding for other Planned Parenthood efforts, such as providing contraception to women.

“What I would do when the time came, I’d look at the individual things they do, and maybe some of the individual things they do are good,” Trump continued, with characteristic eloquence. “I know a lot of the things are bad. But certainly the abortion aspect of it should not be funded by government, absolutely.”

And he went on: “I would look at the good aspects of [Planned Parenthood], and I would also look, because I’m sure they do some things properly and good and that are good for women, and I would look at that, and I would look at other aspects also. But we have to take care of women.”

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Trump’s defense of federal funding for the organizations baffled pro-life activists who spoke with The Daily Beast.

“I’m not quite sure what he was thinking when he said that, to be honest with you,” said Kerri Kupec of the conservative Christian group Alliance Defending Freedom.

“To say, let’s keep funding the quote unquote good aspects—why are we making Americans and their hard-earned tax dollars complicit in this gross behavior that Planned Parenthood is engaging in, this callous disregard for human life?” she added.

Others piled on too.

“All his bankruptcies taught Donald Trump about such cheap accounting tricks,” said John Zmirak, a pro-life columnist for the Christian news aggregation site The Stream. “Planned Parenthood is a criminal enterprise with roots in racist eugenics. If Trump wants taxpayers to subsidize their baby organ profiteering, he should be man enough to admit it.”

And Lila Rose, a prominent pro-life activist and head of the group Live Action, said Trump must not have watched the sting videos that renewed interest in defunding the organization.

“Trump’s vacillation on Planned Parenthood funding is deeply troubling, and reveals an ignorance about their horrific abortion practices,” she said.

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Read the article “Is Donald Trump Planned Parenthood’s Favorite Republican?” on thedailybeast.com.