Trump's statement on abortion is all about him

It's desperate, coming from a candidate who is petrified about the issue. And it won't work.

Yesterday, as media coverage turned to the solar eclipse, Donald Trump released a video claiming to outline his position on abortion. The fact that he wanted to be eclipsed by the eclipse is quite clear.

The message: He wants this issue out of the way, not focused on, as he preposterously tries to take it off the table for this election.

That, of course, is impossible, as Trump is responsible for getting Roe v. Wade overturned, something he again embraced in the video. He wants to tell his followers he did this great thing—overturning Roe with his Supreme Court picks—while at the same time telling them and everyone else that, for now, he’s not doing anything more on this issue that is treacherous for Republicans because he must win an election.

It’s all about him, as we know that, first and foremost, Trump is running for president to keep himself out of prison.

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This video was the most defensive we’ve seen Trump in a while, as is clear if you watch it from beginning to end. He brackets the video at the beginning and in his final statements with two messages that give away his fear and desperation.

He begins without even saying the video is going to be about abortion. He instead starts off praising IVF out of the blue, talking about how the Republican Party wants to make it “easier” to have babies, not “harder,” and extols the wonders of a couple creating a “precious” baby, and how he is all for IVF and in no way against it.

It sounds like the video is going to be all about IVF, but we all know Trump got very spooked by the Florida Supreme Court ruling last week that allows a six week abortion ban to take effect, while allowing the issue of abortion rights to be voted on at the ballot in the state. Trump, when asked about the court’s ruling, waved off a reporter and said he’d have a statement “next week.”

So we knew the video was his response. After rambling on about IVF, he finally gets to abortion over a minute and eleven seconds into a four-minute and 26-second video.

He makes it seem as if he’s only matter-of-factly telling us his thoughts, since “many people have asked me my position on abortion and abortion rights.” The inclusion of the term “abortion rights” is another tell expressing his fears, using a term that he knows will upset the right but desperately hopes will make him seem moderate to swing voters. That’s a ludicrous notion because right after that, he proudly embraces having gotten Roe overturned.

That’s when Trump starts spouting lies, claiming he did something that “all legal scholars” on “both sides” have supported: getting Roe overturned. Again, ridiculous and desperate, as the vast majority of the country—and legal scholars—saw Roe as securing reproductive rights for decades, and view the overturning of it as radical action by extremists.

As he does at his rallies, Trump went on to outlandishly claim Democrats want to have abortion legal “up to and even beyond the ninth month,” and that includes “execution after birth,” a bizarre and, of course, completely false charge. That is murder; there are no doctors doing it, and we have laws against it.

This was a bad conman peaking, going on to say that “now that we have abortion where everyone wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will decide by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land.”

So Trump is trying to position sending abortion back to the states—the destruction of Roe v. Wade—as some sort of middle ground, idiotically thinking he could somehow win back suburban voters this way. (And, by the way, too much of the media, in their coverage of the video statement, allowed him to position it that way, when he was the one who overturned Roe and caused terrible harm to millions. But it’s futile, no matter the coverage, because Americans who support freedom and abortion rights, which is the majority of Americans, are too smart for this.)

Trump then thanked, by name, the six radicals on the Supreme Court who overturned Roe—something that is definitely not going to play well with the voters Trump needs to bring in. He added a throwaway line about supporting exceptions, which, again, we’ve learned the hard way means nothing, as doctors in states that ban abortion are afraid to claim an exception, fearful it will be challenged and that they will go to prison.

Trump then wrapped up his video with an apology to his anti-abortion supporters by saying, “You must follow your heart on this issue, but remember: We must win elections to restore our culture.” After laughably putting out a message of unity and how we all have to come together, Trump repeated that line: “Always go by your heart, but we must win. We have to win.”

The desperation was palpable—that he’s got to win, and he’s not going to let abortion stop him —and Trump expanded on that in an online spat he got into with Senator Lindsay Graham, who said on X that he “respectfully” disagreed with Trump, since he was expecting Trump to come out in support of a 15-week federal abortion ban, as Trump has been indicating for weeks. Trump responded back to Graham:

Many Good Republicans lost Elections because of this Issue, and people like Lindsey Graham, that are unrelenting, are handing Democrats their dream of the House, Senate, and perhaps even the Presidency.

This was comical and almost seemed staged so that Trump could present himself as not so far right on the issue—but there were other anti-abortion activists who also expressed they were “disappointed.” Trump knows he can screw them over, however, because they have nowhere to go and have already given him undying devotion, and the nomination.

And, let’s be clear about what Trump didn’t say: He didn’t state that he would not support a federal abortion ban. He simply didn’t promote one, as he’d floated for weeks now, saying only that the the states “will decide” right now. Nor did he say he wouldn’t use existing legislation—including the Comstock Act from 1873, which bans mailing any medications, materials, or equipment that could allow for abortions—to ban abortion nationally if elected president. This is all presented in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint, embraced by Trump, for authoritarian theocracy.

Back in January, The New York Times quoted Trump’s own far-right attorney, who represented him against the Colorado Supreme Court’s attempt to remove Trump from the ballot, saying that they didn’t need a new ban passed:

“We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books,” said Jonathan F. Mitchell, the legal force behind a 2021 Texas law that found a way to effectively ban abortion in the state before Roe v. Wade was overturned. “There’s a smorgasbord of options.”

Mr. Mitchell, who represented Mr. Trump in arguments before the Supreme Court over whether the former president could appear on the ballot in Colorado, indicated that anti-abortion strategists had purposefully been quiet about their more advanced plans, given the political liability the issue has become for Republicans.

Mitchell even told the Times he hopes Trump doesn’t learn about or talk about the Comstock Act, as they want to keep it under wraps:

“I hope he doesn’t know about the existence of Comstock, because I just don’t want him to shoot off his mouth,” Mr. Mitchell said of Mr. Trump. “I think the pro-life groups should keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election.”

So Trump clearly got the message that the best thing to do now is to try to remove abortion from the political discussion, and that everyone should “keep their mouths shut until the election.” (Democrats in the Senate, by the way, should right now put the GOP on the spot, pushing through a vote to repeal the Comstock Act.)

But it’s way too late to just try to not say anything about abortion. Trump is responsible for overturning Roe, full stop. And he takes full credit for it. This attempt to push the issue out of the election discourse shows he’s petrified of the issue. And it won’t work.

Democrats have been energized around Trump’s and the GOP’s actions since the fall of Roe and have won election after election on it. The Biden campaign went full force at Trump immediately yesterday, putting the responsibility at his feet—using his own words—and released a powerful ad within minutes of his statement that focuses on a woman who almost died because she couldn’t get an abortion.

The wrenching ad centers on the story of Amanda Zurawski and her husband, a Texas couple, talking about the miscarriage Amanda experienced. The ad is clear that “because of Donald Trump,” Texas wouldn’t allow her the standard of medical care, an abortion, to prevent an infection. It ends with, "Donald Trump did this." The ad is part of a $30 million ad campaign and will be aired on broadcast TV and cable channels in battleground states.

As the Associated Press noted in a piece yesterday headlined, “Trump’s abortion statement angers conservatives and gives the Biden campaign a new target,” Trump has only dug a deeper hole for himself with his statement yesterday:

Donald Trump still says he’s proud that the Supreme Court justices he nominated overturned Roe v. Wade. Yet he again on Monday avoided tough questions about abortion, including whether he would support a national abortion ban should he return to the White House.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee tried to put to rest an issue widely seen as a general election liability. Instead, his video statement exposed the tough road ahead and inflamed leaders on both sides of the issue.

Again, it’s unlikely Trump’s Christian nationalist base will not turn out for him—these transactional zealots have always turned out in the past, and he did deliver for them on Roe—however “disappointed” they are now. Still, even the slightest depression of energy—even a half of a percent—can be detrimental to Trump, who has a ceiling and needs every last Republican to vote while trying to depress Democratic turnout or hope third party candidates take votes from Biden.

But more importantly, Trump’s convoluted video message only supercharges the Biden campaign and Democrats, helping them to get their base out big and get out independents and pro-choice Republicans. Rather than putting the issue to rest, it only raises more questions, which Trump will be pressed to answer. Rather than getting away from the issue of abortion, he’s got it tied around his neck all the way until November.