Just as quickly as news broke over the weekend that Donald Trump has been privately expressing support for a 16-week national abortion ban, the Trump campaign scrambled to shoot it down.
According to The New York Times, Trump is liking the idea of a 16-week ban with exceptions in the cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother. Naturally, Trump had devoted a lot of deep thinking to the matter.
“Know what I like about 16?” Trump told a confidant, according to the Times. “It’s even. It’s four months.”
Welp, he's got Democrats there. But exactly nowhere else, and his campaign knows it judging by their panicked response. Mere hours after the story broke, Trump's national press secretary Karoline Leavitt blasted out a statement calling it "fake news."
“As President Trump has stated, he would sit down with both sides and negotiate a deal that everyone will be happy with,” Leavitt said, demonstrating Republicans' deeply misguided perceptions of the issue.
No, American women won't be giddily bargaining away their freedoms under the direction of a man a jury found liable for sexual assault.
Naturally, Democrats immediately seized on the issue. After the Biden-Harris campaign account tweeted out the Times story, President Joe Biden quote-tweeted it, writing, "If you elect Donald Trump, he’ll implement a national abortion ban. If you elect me, a Democratic House, and more Democratic senators, we’ll restore Roe."
Once Team Trump sought to quash the reporting, Biden released a statement, according to NBC News.
"Now, after being the one responsible for taking away women’s freedom, after being the one to put women’s lives in danger, after being the one who has unleashed all this cruelty and chaos all across America, Trump is running scared. He’s afraid the women of America are going to hold him responsible for taking away their rights and endangering their rights at the ballot box in November," Biden said.
Abortion could be a make-or-break issue for Republicans in November. Trump has repeatedly bragged about killing Roe v. Wade, saying he's "proud" of packing the Supreme with anti-abortion justices and marveling at his mastery of the universe.
"The fact that I was able to terminate Roe v. Wade, I’ve never seen anything like it," Trump said at a CNN town hall last year.
For over a year, Trump hasn't been able to stop blathering about his great conquest: robbing American women of the right to make their own health care decisions.
It’s very likely that will come back to haunt him in November. Democrats have very successfully leveraged the issue against Republicans in several special elections, and abortion rights have won over and over again when they’ve been explicitly on the ballot.
So Team Trump can try to put that toothpaste back in the tube, but video of Trump congratulating himself for ending Roe is already cued up in a slew of Democratic ad reels across the country.
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.
