Donald Trump appeared on Meet the Press yesterday to deliver his usual word salad and outright lies on a variety of subjects. Here are some excerpts from his musings on abortion:
five months, six months, seven months, eight months, nine months
five, six, seven, eight, nine months
four and five and six months.
you're going to come up with a number of weeks or months
people are starting to think of 15 weeks
DeSanctus is willing to sign a five-week and six-week ban
six months, seven months, eight months
a number of weeks or months or however you want to define it
the number of weeks is much more important
something will happen with the number of weeks
Mike Pence said something about 15 weeks too
now all of a sudden he's saying 15 weeks
It's going to be a number of weeks
There is a number, and there’s a number that's going to be agreed to
you will win on this issue when you come up with the right number of weeks
the seventh month or the ninth month or after birth
Trump is obsessed with the notion that he can get the whole country together on abortion by choosing just the right number of weeks when it becomes illegal. Needless to say, there are a limited number of choices here, from 0 to 39, nearly all of which have been discussed at one point or another. And guess what? There's no agreement!
Trump is obviously just bullshitting here, but there's still an interesting question to ask: Will he influence the abortion debate among conservatives? That is, if he zeroes in on 15 weeks as the magic number, will conservatives stand their ground or will they moderate their views out of loyalty to Trump?
It could go either way. On the one hand, Republicans have shown a remarkable willingness to follow Trump's about-face on previously long-held views—Social Security, Medicare, free trade, and so forth. On the other hand, Trump's power is not unlimited: when he tried to get his fans to support vaccines they booed him off the stage. I suspect that will be the case on abortion too. The closer Trump gets to proposing a hard number, the more opposition he's going to get from his own base. He's eventually going to have to back down, I think, at which point he'll pretend that he's always said life begins at conception and he's said it very strongly. We'll see.
It's a good thing that t-Rump was never able to become pregnant. That would have definitely have been an abortion, at any month or week. He is such a horses ass and it frightens me to death that folks vote for him!!
We blues, or liberals are becoming the lost race of blues.
Trump may never have been pregnant, but he's probably paid for more than his fair share of abortions over the years.
Trump just said that Kristi Noem just gave him her “full throated” endorsement so maybe not.
Many years ago, back when Trump used to appear on Howard Stern's show, Stern once asked Trump how many abortions he has paid for. Trump just gave a smile.
24 weeks was the consensus number for 50 years.
24 weeks was SCOTUS's number. I don't think it accurate to claim there was a consensus.
Nah. Republicans will follow Trump on this. After all, as Trump now leads Biden in election polls, Der Fuhrer's opinion will strongly emanate from their pieholes.
Whatever it is and every time it changes.
Not a chance in Hell. I'm a former Christian, from the Evangelical wing, and I assure you that abortion is a non-negotiable issue among the Christian Right. Trump CANNOT waffle on this and expect to remain viable on the national stage.
Evangelical opposition to abortion has been an absolute lodestar of the political right wing for over 50 years. (Among Catholics it has been even longer than that.) And now, for the first time in two generations, Evangelicals see a real chance to effect change. And you think they will be OK if Trump waffles?
I would almost like to see Trump waffle on abortion, just to witness all the heads exploding on the right wing. But if Trump has any political instincts at all, he won't do it.
No kidding. I have never heard a mainstream reporter ask the obvious question, which is DO YOU BELIEVE LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION?
That's what all the anti-abortionists believe, and it is no analytical leap at all to simply say, well, as to the mother, who cares? There is a little innocent baby in there. If anyone thinks that anti-abortion is fundamentally anti-women, boy are they confusing cause and effect.
Likewise, it would be refreshing to see as Dem candidate, on the way to pointing out his or her support for abortion rights, to throw in there that life begins at viability, just to make it clear.
The deep unmentionable here is that it's all about the soul for them. Soul is a religious concept that's beyond the law's scope. It's true that once upon a time Western governments and churches did think the law should be about the cure of souls. Unending wars of religion and untold deaths and legal murders later, we changed that. Freedom of religious expression and belief has the consequence that law does not exist to enforce religious doctrine. No matter how profoundly it upsets some people.
I think the fundies will vote for him on the basis that he never really follows through on his statements. They figure he'll sign whatever the Republicans can get on his desk even if it's the death penalty for women who get an abortion and life without parole for those who assist them.
They are talking about 15 week nation wide ban. That's not a softening of anything. It's a tightening of restrictions in most places and a loosening nowhere. It's just incrementalism.
Yeah, this is a trap I hope Dems are smart enough to stay out of. Every time I hear "91% of abortions occur before 15 weeks" I cringe because it's normalizing the idea that this would be a good compromise. First, it excludes the 9% who get them later and second, it would be just the start of the compromises.
His supporters include a really steadfast no-abortions-under-any-circumstances faction and the overall outcome depends on how big that group is. But recently I heard a podcast interviewee who said the single biggest factor in trump support has been immigration, not abortion. Whoever backs him for that reason won't care about this waffling.
But you know what? The big majority of even the really hard-core anti-abortion faction will still stick with him because who else have they got? And if they're shrewd, they might figure that by this point SCOTUS will have a lot more to say about abortion than any president. And that might be right, too.
95% of abortions happen in the first 15 weeks.
Now we’re supposed to believe the same GOP the screamed that abortion is murder, is cool with eliminating only 5% of abortions in the US? That’s seriously the official GOP position now?
Why doesn’t someone ask Trump about that? Or Pence? Or Lindsey Baby? What in the holy hell was the past 50 years about if all the Christofascists wanted was to eliminate 5% of abortions? So abortion *was* murder?
This is all so stupid, how the hell journalists aren’t openly mocking the right wingers on this just goes to show how baked they are into the process.
The polling seems off, more people oppose abortions bans after six weeks than fifteen weeks but then it reverts in all cases? Looks like the pollster was trying to do too much and ended up with a jumble response. Pretty worthless.
The closer Trump gets to proposing a hard number, the more opposition he's going to get from his own base.
Hmm, ya spoze that has anything to do with how he's all over the map about it?
He's against it when it's too late, when it's bad, and for it when it's ok, which is good, and it's also ok under some conditions, which is also good, but not when it's not, because that's bad.
That is his position, and his cult supports it fully.
Two points:
- WHO CARES. Trump should not be near making any rules on abortion. He must not be elected again. What number he picks to campaign on is irrelevant. It's very cute, but at this point, we can't afford cuteness.
- the last question of the WSJ poll is weird. Are a majority of people opposed to a BAN on traveling to other states? Are a majority opposed to traveling to other states to get an abortion? The second one seems counter-intuitive, but it's not clear the question asks the first one.
First, it is just a 100% waste of time to discuss any Trump "policy". He has none on any issue. He'll lie and deflect and have 10 different positions on the same policy to the point where nothing he says about anything matters. How so many voters and the fucking media fall for his BS will never cease to amaze me.
Second, after Dobbs, I'm now of the opinion that there should be no time restrictions on abortion whatsoever. It should be between a doctor and a woman and, if she chooses, her family. Okay, I suppose a purely elective abortion could have some time limits, but beyond that if a doctor recommends the best course of action should be an abortion, then fucking goddamn morons like MTG and, well, the entire Republican party, should have no say at all in those very hard decisions.
"First, it is just a 100% waste of time to discuss any Trump "policy"."
+1
Actually worse than waste of time, because to people that don't pay much attention it gives the impression that he has got a policy, and therefore it is misleading.
Where the fetus is healthy, post-viability surgical pregnancy terminations are generally called Caesarian sections, not abortions. By the same token, late-term medical terminations are called "induced labor", not abortion. It's just a vocabulary issue.
I keep seeing stories about what horrible legal trouble Billionaire Barksalot is in, but I really don't think we should be so sanguine.
He just needs one juror out of twelve to refuse to convict him of anything.
Take the next twelve people you see downtown and how many are going to be complete halfwits? All it takes is one.
On my mind this afternoon because I just got a card in the mail telling me I'm up for jury duty.
Alas, I'm nowhere near the east coast or Florida.
Ugh, I hate jury duty. I get called every couple of years. I don’t get picked though. I hate voir dire.
Same here. I think this is the fifth time in about twelve years I've been called and haven't been picked yet. It's just anxiety provoking.
The willingness, nay eagerness, of so many Republicans to find a "compromise" position on abortion demonstrates how cynically opportunistic their "pro-life" arguments have always been. Either life begins at conception or it doesn't. There are no rational or moral arguments allowing doctors to "kill babies" for some arbitrary period after life has begun.
Trump is pretending to care about the issue to appeal to moderates, right before he talks to the other side about how great he was for appointing the people to SCOTUS who helped overturn Roe.
We've seen this script before, KD.
Again, Kevin, you're
- seeing politics the way it was 30 years ago
- imagining a monolithic "Republican" constituency.
Yes, there is a part of the Republican coalition that cares substantially about abortion and its details. And a much larger part that (just like their Democrat equivalent) goes with whatever the tribe tells them to believe.
But the "natural" next version of the Republican party is something like a coalition of Family/America voters ("Rural") and everyone who feels screwed over by credentialism ("the Working Poor"). In the process dropping most of business, who will go with their kin-folk, "the Credentialed".
Most of these Rural/Working Poor see abortion in the same "unfortunate, but some times there is no alternative" way as most of America, and it probably makes sense to reach out to them.
There is a general point here which is "who you gonna believe?" in terms of politics. Trump is clearly an awful human being, but that doesn't change the fact that he appears to have a native feel for the politics of America today in a way that people who despise anyone without a credential and have never even landed in flyover country do not. I'd trust his instincts over what the bulk of his voters are willing to compromise on a lot more than the opinion of a journalist or most political scientists...
It's a mistake to confuse the Trump base with rigid old-style social conservatives-- Trump's base is better described as culturally conservative (on race, ethnicity, etc) than socially conservative on issues like abortion. But even most of the social conservatives will vote for Trump and mute their criticism no matter where he comes down on abortion: He's not a Democrat after all. An extreme example is blogger (and Viktor Orban cheerleade0 Rod Dreher who plainly loathes Trump, but states he will vote for him over any Democrat.