Tweet Share Share Comment During the Donald Trump town hall on Fox News Wednesday night, an undecided Republican voter stepped forward and asked the former president to reassure her that he would “protect all life without compromise.” She was grateful for what he’d done to the courts to enable the reversal of Roe v. Wade, she said, but she was also concerned: Trump has called Florida’s strict abortion ban a “terrible mistake,” declined to support the idea of a federal abortion ban, and blamed Republicans’ midterm losses on “the abortion issue.”
This was an important moment for the night—perhaps the only question that genuinely challenged Trump to take a political stance on a substantive issue for Republican voters. Up to this point, Trump had used his air time to wave off the criticism of some of his more anti-democratic comments (the press, he huffed, had made too big of a deal about him saying he planned to be a dictator for just one day), mock Ron DeSantis, rant about immigration and COVID shutdowns, claim to have power over the stock market, and brag about his hotels. So this segment was different.
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He started, predictably, with a boast. “For 54 years, they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it,” he said. “We did something that was a miracle.” He then told an anecdote about being thanked by someone backstage for “saving 2 million lives.”
But then something interesting happened.
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A major part of Trump’s evangelical base cares deeply about abortion. And yet, Trump knows that abortion cost Republicans heavily in the midterm elections. He likely knows it could be damaging in the general election against Joe Biden. So in addressing an anti-abortion question, he took a position he knew his audience wouldn’t necessarily like.
“I happen to be for the exceptions, like Ronald Reagan, with the life of the mother, rape, incest,” he said. “I have to be there.”
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Then: “I will say this, you have to win elections. Otherwise you are going to be back where you were. You can’t ever let that happen again.”
For the man largely responsible for the biggest pro-life victory in a half a century, this was a remarkable shift. But it was also likely a savvy way to appease the wider electorate, both positioning himself as a hero of the pro-life movement and making his less severe stance out to be a respectable and normal Republican one. (The party of Reagan!) And not just normal, but necessary to protect their movement, given political realities. Meanwhile, he signaled to the suburban women troubled by abortion bans that he’s at least not as much of a threat as they may fear. He seemed, in this moment, to figure out how to have it all in a shrewd, politically reasoned way, no bluster necessary.
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And he would continue on, claiming he wanted “to get something where people are happy,” noting—perhaps taking a page from his rival Nikki Haley’s attempts to walk a middle way on the issue—that “this has been tearing our country apart for 50 years.” He even acknowledged that many women don’t know they’re pregnant at five weeks of gestation, saying “we’re living in a time where there has to be a little bit of a concession.”
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It was an interesting exchange, watching Trump speak to political limitations, rather than hyperbolic claims of victory or victimization.
It couldn’t last forever, though; as ever, Trump kept talking, and he soon returned to his ways. He rounded out his answer with a repeated declaration that “they are the radicals, we are not the radicals” because “they will kill a baby” and a callback to when he told Hillary Clinton she was “willing to rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month.”
Still, before that turn, compared to Trump’s other answers, his response was focused and judicious. As he noted, “I want to get it right, I have to get it right.” Donald Trump is bound to say just about anything, but he does want to win—and he knows abortion could get in his way of that. Even Donald Trump, it seems, can’t bulldoze his way through this issue.
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- Donald Trump
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For a Moment, Trump Had a Shrewd Answer to the Abortion Question
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11.01.2024
Tweet Share Share Comment During the Donald Trump town hall on Fox News Wednesday night, an undecided Republican voter stepped forward and asked the former president to reassure her that he would “protect all life without compromise.” She was grateful for what he’d done to the courts to enable the reversal of Roe v. Wade, she said, but she was also concerned: Trump has called Florida’s strict abortion ban a “terrible mistake,” declined to support the idea of a federal abortion ban, and blamed Republicans’ midterm losses on “the abortion issue.”
This was an important moment for the night—perhaps the only question that genuinely challenged Trump to take a political stance on a substantive issue for Republican voters. Up to this point, Trump had used his air time to wave off the criticism of some of his more anti-democratic comments (the press, he huffed, had made too big of a deal about him saying he planned to be a dictator for just one day), mock Ron DeSantis, rant about immigration and COVID shutdowns, claim to have power over the stock market, and brag about his hotels. So this segment was different.
Advertisement He started, predictably, with a boast. “For 54 years, they were trying to get........
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