The Daily - Trump's Abortion Dilemma

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

By the time his first term was over, Donald J. Trump had cemented his place as the most anti-abortion president in U.S. history. Now, facing political blowback, he’s trying to change that reputation.Lisa Lerer, a national political correspondent for The Times, discusses whether Mr. Trump’s election-year pivot can work.Guest: Lisa Lerer, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: After months of mixed signals, former President Donald J. Trump said abortion restrictions should be left to the states.On abortion, Mr. Trump chose politics over principles. Will it matter?For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. By the time his first term was over, Donald Trump had cemented his place as the most anti-abortion president in U.S. history. Now, facing political blowback, he's trying to change that reputation. Today, my colleague Lisa Lehrer on whether Trump's election year pivot can work. It's Wednesday, April 10th. Lisa, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me.

So, Lisa, this week, Donald Trump weighed in on one of the most contentious American social issues of our time, and one that has, of course, been right at the center of American politics. And that is abortion. This is a topic you know very deeply and very well. So we wanted to have you on the show to talk about what Trump said and what it means for the presidential campaign. Well, this was a really anticipated statement. Trump, in his classic Trumpian way, had been sort of teasing it that he was going to come out with where he stood on abortion. And so he comes out with this statement bright and early Monday morning. And he had three main points that he really ran through in his remarks, which were posted on his social media network, True Social.

Under my leadership, the Republican Party will always support the creation of strong, thriving and healthy American families. He starts out by talking about the Republican Party being the party of families. And this was really a way to talk about IVF, which, of course, are the fertility treatments. And that became a major topic of the national conversation after Alabama had a court ruling that would have really limited access to those treatments. I strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby. What could be more beautiful or better than that? There's very few things that the country is unified around right now, and support for IVF is one of them. So Trump comes out and says that he, too, supports those treatments.

He believes access to them should be kept open and free. So that was his first point. Then. Many people have asked me what my position is on abortion and abortion rights. He moves into the abortion part of his remarks. Especially since I was proudly the person responsible for the ending of something that... And the first thing he does is take credit for ending Roe v. Wade, which is, of course, the decision that created a constitutional right to abortion. I want to thank the six justices, Chief Justice John Roberts,

Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch. Incredible people. And then he moves to what he sees as his future thoughts, where the country should go in this new post-Roe era. This 50-year battle over Roe v. Wade took it out of the federal hands and brought it into the hearts, minds, and vote of the people in each state was really something. And what he basically says is that it should be left to the states. Now it's up to the states to do the right thing.

Like Ronald Reagan, I am strongly in favor of exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother. You must follow your heart of this issue. He expresses support that bans should include exemptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. If a woman falls into any of those three categories, she should be allowed to get an abortion. At the end of the day, it's all about will of the people.

That's where we are right now, and that's what we want, the will of the people. But the most striking thing about this four-minute video was perhaps the issue that he didn't mention at all, the issue he left out, which is this question of a 15-week federal ban. Practically since the fall of Roe, since the Dobbs case overturned that right, the anti-abortion movement has been pushing to get Republicans to line up behind this idea of a 15-week federal ban,

effectively a restriction that would cover the entire country. So in the 30 or so states that allow abortion past that point in pregnancy, they would no longer be allowed to do that. All abortion across the country would be criminalized after 15 weeks. So a huge change for blue states all over the place. A huge change for blue states, some swing states, even some more conservative states that haven't passed these more restrictive total bans. Trump has been wishy-washy on the issue for two years or so. He's sort of dangled that maybe he would get behind this push and support a 15-week federal ban, but he never quite committed to it. And what we see in this video is that he's still not committing to it. He doesn't say if such legislation came to his desk, he

doesn't say whether he would sign it. But what the anti-abortion movement hears in this is that he will not be advocating for this policy. So he's in essence pulling away from what the mainstream of the anti-abortion movement wants, right? This federal ban. But how should we understand what he's doing here? Like, what's he up to? Well, what he's trying to do is win the election. That's what he's trying to do here. I mean, abortion is a hugely important issue, this race. Democrats hope it will be the issue that could define and decide this election. Since the right to an abortion was overturned, it transformed American politics in some ways. It created this coalition of pro-abortion rights voters who have turned out for Democrats again and again. They've turned out in the midterms. They've turned out in small sort of state legislative elections. They've

turned out in gubernatorial races in 2023. And Trump knows that. And so what we're seeing him do is to try to find a path through this issue that he believes has been damaging to Republicans. And what he's attempting to do with this statement is sort of defang some of the Democratic power, some of this energizing force that abortion rights has become for Democrats in American politics. But that's a pretty sharp pivot, right? I mean, this is the president who takes credit for overturning Roe, after all, and now he's trying to tack back to the middle. It is a pivot, but it's not all that surprising of one. This is a politician who, unlike probably anyone else in American

public life, has taken just about every position on abortion someone could have throughout his career. on abortion someone could have throughout his career. Would President Trump ban partial birth abortions? Well, look, I'm very pro-choice. I hate the concept of abortion. When he first started flirting with the presidential run back in the late 90s, he went on TV and said he was very pro-choice. But you would not ban it?

No. Or ban partial birth abortions? No, I would, I would, I am pro-choice. But you would not ban it? No. Or ban partial birth control? No, I would, I would, I am, I am pro-choice in every respect and as far as it goes, but I just hate it. Just very briefly, I'm pro-life. A decade or so later, he became pro-life before an audience of conservatives. I've evolved on many issues over the years.

And you know who else has? Ronald Reagan evolved on many issues. And I am pro-life. And then in 2016, when he ran, he was never the candidate of the anti-abortion crowd. They didn't trust him. They knew how he had moved on their issue. Many of them voted for other candidates, but he won over the rank-and-file

conservative Christian voters. And they extracted during that campaign a series of promises from him. I am pro-life, and I will be appointing pro-life judges. Most significantly was that he would appoint what he called pro-life judges. Do you want... Most significantly was that he would appoint what he called pro-life judges. Do you want to see the court overturn really well?

Well, if we put another two or perhaps three justices on, that's really what's going to be... That will happen. And that'll happen automatically, in my opinion, because I am putting pro-life justices on the court. And he got elected, and he changed the composition of the court to a more socially conservative bent for a generation. He worked to defund Planned Parenthood. And by the time he ran again in 2020, the anti-abortion movement was calling him the most pro-life president in history. And he didn't win,

but he turned out millions of Christian conservative voters behind him. Right. And so Trump leaves office in 2021. And then a year later, all of those appointments he made to the court give the anti-abortion movement really its biggest win in generations, the overturning of Roe v. Wade. His promise to appoint those pro-life judges, as he put it, bears fruit in a massive way, in a way that outpaced even what the anti-abortion movement had hoped for when they first extracted those promises for Trump back in 2016. But what they didn't see coming on either side of the abortion debate was how quickly the politics would transform.

That's when we saw this historically energizing issue for Republicans become really a much more motivating issue for Democrats and independents. I think the Republicans speak very inarticulately about this subject. And when Trump saw those politics change, he began criticizing the anti-abortion movement and their leaders. I watched some of them, without exceptions, et cetera, et cetera. I said, other than certain parts of the country, you can't, you're not going to win on this issue. As pushing for restrictions that were really just, he felt a little bit too harsh.

He blamed them for Republican defeats in the 2022 midterms. And so he expressed some views that this was an issue, abortion, that even though he was happy to take credit for putting those justices in who overturned Roe, that the politics of this issue, how it all shook out in the post-Roe world, was hurting Republicans and was a political loser. So in other words, throughout his career, he's followed the political winds on abortion. Exactly. For the anti-abortion movement, this is a spiritual quest. The effort to end abortion is an effort to right what they see as a moral wrong in American life. For Trump, like so many things, this is politics. This is transactional. He'll give the anti-abortion movement this, and they'll give him his votes. It's not about morality. It's about politics. This is transactional. He'll give the anti-abortion movement this, and they'll give him his votes. It's not about morality.

It's about politics. It's not about morality. It's about politics. It's about winning votes. It's about courting interest groups and building his coalition. And so that long history of back and forth, of transactional politics, of flip-flopping,

that all really leads us to this moment. At the end of the video, he says, Always go by your heart, but we must win. We have to win. We have to win. And that's basically Trump's views on abortion in a nutshell. He's kind of saying the quiet part out loud, right? Like, this isn't about abortion.

It's about winning votes. And if this issue isn't going to win me votes, I'm ditching it. That's exactly right. And that, of course, leads to a more essential question, which is, will his political gamble to chart this middle path, well, will it work? We'll be right back. We'll be right back. So, Lisa, Trump is making a bet, right, that not going all in on the abortion issue is a smart move politically. Help me understand how exactly he thinks this will help him win. I don't know exactly what he's thinking, but what he's clearly trying to do is create a political position that allows moderates who may want to support him, but also support abortion rights to cast their votes for him. I spend a lot of time talking to voters about their views on abortion, and their views are complicated, often more complicated than you can get at in survey questions.

This is an issue that's really intimate. It's really personal. And so you have a lot of Republicans, mostly more moderate Republicans, who support some form of abortion rights. It's more than 40 percent by some surveys. And so what Trump is trying to do here is make it OK for people with these complicated views about abortion to vote for him, even if they do support abortion rights. He's saying, look, I'm not with the party that wants to do all this extreme stuff. I actually have a more moderate view. If you are kind of a moderate on the abortion issue, I'm your guy.

That's exactly right. And this is important because while these voters who are Republican but support some form of abortion rights are across the country, who are Republican but support some form of abortion rights are across the country, they're more concentrated in these really crucial, swingy, battleground suburban districts, places like suburban Phoenix or suburban Milwaukee. And support in those kinds of places won Biden the election in 2020. That was a big reason why he was able to win the White House. So what Trump is trying to do is ensure that he can, while maybe not totally win those places, at least cut into Biden's strength in those areas and also allow

those voters to think about issues that he believes are more favorable for Republicans, immigration or inflation or crime. Let them vote on those issues by neutralizing in his mind this question about abortion rights. Right. Got it. But where does that leave his base, though? I mean, doesn't this position alienate them? Well, so what Trump is calculating here is that his base is with him anyhow. Conservative Christians are behind his bid just as they have been since 2016. These are people who have stuck with him through all of it, not just the loss in 2020, but January 6th, the indictments, his current legal peril. A lot of these conservative Christians are

still with him, and they're going to vote for him regardless of what he says about abortion now, also because they're still giving him credit for accomplishing this really big thing that was, in fact, the thing, the overturning of Roe. And you could really see that in the statements that anti-abortion leaders and groups put out responding to this video. People like Marjorie Danesfelter, who leads a really big anti-abortion group. You know, some of them took issue with what Trump said. Some of them didn't like that he didn't support any kind of federal action, particularly a federal ban. But none of them said that they wouldn't be voting for him in November. And in fact,

many of the leaders in the group said that they would continue to work tirelessly to defeat Biden. Okay, so this is Trump's political gambit. He's hoping that most of his base actually stays with him, and he's trying to win over some of the voters in the middle. What do his colleagues within the Republican Party make of all of this? Well, for people like Senator Lindsey Graham, like former Vice President Mike Pence, people who really had opposition to abortion as a defining cause, a central cause of their political career, they came out and said they didn't like this at all. For them, the fall of constitutional abortion rights was only the beginning. They want to eliminate abortion across the country. So they need some kind of federal statute. And so they came out and they

offered some harsh criticism of Trump, saying that he had abandoned this foundational cause of the Republican Party. And Trump, he hit right back. He went on his social media network, True Social, and he attacked Marjorie Danes-Felser and Senator Graham, saying that they should study states' rights in the 10th Amendment. And after they did, they should get on with helping Republicans win elections rather than, he said, making impossible for them to do so. I mean, he's doing a very Trumpy thing, right? He has that kind of bull in a china shop upending these long-held Republican positions. You know, for so long, Republicans opposed abortion no matter what. Like, that was the default position.

But Trump is saying, hey, the politics have changed here, guys. We have to change with them. And for this handful of Republicans who opposed what he said, there were plenty of Republicans, particularly candidates in swing states, that quickly aligned themselves with Trump's new position on this. nominee in Arizona and the Republican in Ohio in the Ohio Senate race, candidates in Michigan, thought that Trump had offered them a new template, a way to talk about this issue that may defang some of the political attacks against them that are being launched by Democrats. Interesting. So this is maybe showing a way kind of out of the woods for swing state Republicans on a pretty difficult issue for Republicans. Well, it's certainly giving them a glimmer of hope that they can find their way out.

What we don't know, of course, is if it's going to work. And there's a lot of reasons why it may not. You know, Trump is really trying to have it both ways. He wants credit for being the president who appointed the justices, who overturned Roe. But he also wants to wash his hands of the political ramifications of this issue. And Democrats are just not going to let him do that. His statement on Monday was met with a flood of Democratic response. Biden put out a statement that campaign hammered him. And perhaps the most impactful and really salient thing the Biden campaign did is they released a new ad with a woman telling the story

of how after she lost her pregnancy, she was unable to get an abortion in Texas and developed a severe infection that almost killed her twice and now may make it impossible for her to ever have another child. And it's a really personal, heart-stirring ad that really gets at why this issue is just so difficult for Republicans.

The stories are so intimate, they're so real, and there's just a steady drumbeat of them coming out of these conservative states. So as much as Republicans want to talk about this in this sort of distance way of states' rights versus federal rights, this is a situation that is really real for a lot of women in America and forcing them to make really difficult medical and emotional choices. So it continues to be a very live, very difficult issue for Trump. I mean, you know, saying it should be back to the states, as you point out, doesn't mean that the issue goes away.

The states are still passing these very restrictive bans, which are, of course, made possible by the overturning of Roe. And these bans are, at a national level, pretty unpopular. Correct. And even if Republicans in Congress aren't taking steps on this, Republicans in state houses are moving forward. We saw this in Florida, where the court upheld a 15-week ban that will court upheld a 15-week ban that will next month be a six-week ban on the procedure. That issue will then go to voters in November in the form of a ballot measure. And even as we sit here right now recording this episode in the studio, we are waiting on a decision from the Arizona Supreme Court, which is going to decide

whether the state's current ban on nearly all abortions after 15 weeks stays in place or becomes something even more restrictive. So this is just a very live issue. And it's something that continues to dominate headlines and continues to be top of mind for a lot of American voters and particularly American women. And look, I think what Donald Trump really wanted to do with this video was take abortion off the table, sort of neutralize it for the election. But whatever Trump wants, this issue is not going anywhere. It's something that's going to continue to dominate through this presidential race and potentially beyond. Lisa, thank you. Thank you for having me.

On Tuesday afternoon, Arizona's Supreme Court ruled that an abortion ban originally enacted in 1864, but dormant for decades under Roe v. Wade, is now enforceable. The near-total ban in the critical swing state makes no exceptions for rape or incest. President Biden immediately seized on it, calling it cruel and saying that it was the result of, quote, the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials. Abortion rights activists say they have collected enough signatures to put a measure on the ballot in Arizona this fall that would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution. If, as expected, they succeed, it would put the question at the forefront of this year's presidential race and offer a high-stakes test of Trump's new approach. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. On Tuesday, Jennifer and James Crumbly,

whose teenage son perpetrated the deadliest school shooting in Michigan's history, were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison. They had been convicted of involuntary manslaughter for failing to prevent their son, Ethan, from killing four of his classmates. The historic sentencing makes the Crumblys the first parents in the country to be convicted for the deaths caused by their child in a mass shooting. Prosecutors argued that the Crumblys ignored warning signs and accused Mr. Crumbly of failing to secure the gun his son used in the shooting. Their son pled guilty to 24 charges, including first-degree murder, and was sentenced last year to life in prison without parole. He did not testify in either of his parents' trials.

Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko, Luke Vander Ploeg, and Shannon Lin, with help from Summer Tomad. It was edited by Lexi Diao with help from Michael Benoit. Contains original music by Marian Lozano, Dan Powell, Diane Wong, and Pat McCusker. And was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi.

See you tomorrow.