Former President Donald Trump has a problem: Inflammatory lies are always his first solution to any dilemma.
His message on abortion speaks for itself.
President Trump likes to brag about appointing three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn constitutional protections for abortion in June 2022. But he knows that in that year’s midterm elections, the abortion rulings mobilized angry voters eager to punish Republicans.
With the Republican National Convention getting underway in Milwaukee this week, Trump now argues abortion should be regulated by states, while denying Democratic accusations that his second term would lead to a nationwide ban on abortion.
And Trump has a problem: Many of his right-wing supporters call for a nationwide ban on abortion and hate to hear him distance himself from it.
Trump’s insane solution is to claim that President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are advocating for allowing abortion “even after birth.”
That’s not true, but Trump’s most loyal supporters have shown they don’t care about the truth when it comes to feeding them the inflammatory lies they want to swallow. And this lie, which Trump has peddled repeatedly since 2016, may appeal to them and deflect criticism from the right.
Trump’s campaign couldn’t answer why he lied about abortion
Trump brought up the lie again during last month’s debate, saying of Democrats on stage with Biden: “Their problem is extreme, because they take the lives of children at eight months, nine months, even at birth.”
Biden, who seemed lost for much of the debate, criticized Trump for helping to roll back abortion protections but didn’t refute Trump’s false narrative that Democrats support infanticide — an easy whitewash Trump threw at Biden, and one that Biden couldn’t land a hit on.
Last week, I asked the Trump campaign for evidence of his claim that Democrats support the murder of newborns. I asked for specific examples of states where abortion is legal “even after birth” and for specific instances where such abortions are being performed.
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Trump’s national press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, didn’t offer any examples, but instead repeated the arguments made during the debate and countered with examples of Biden and other Democrats supporting abortion rights.
When I asked about the Biden campaign’s position on the issue, they sent me five examples of media coverage from 2020, 2022 and 2024, including a CNN fact-check article from last month that easily refuted Trump’s claims.
Trump doesn’t let facts get in the way of his campaign lies
Trump knows that by repeating these lies, he can help them stick with his base of support and spread them to undecided voters who don’t realize they’re being lied to.
Katie Rodihan, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood, called Trump’s claims “pure propaganda.”
“What Trump is talking about is infanticide, which is already illegal. To say otherwise is dangerous and insulting,” Rodihan told me. “Abortions after birth are not performed.”
Rodihan added that late-term abortions are “often the result of a dire medical diagnosis.”
In these cases, either the foetus is seriously ill and unlikely to survive, or the pregnancy is endangering the life of the pregnant woman. It is absurd that a woman nine months pregnant would decide at the last moment to have an abortion.
Fewer than 1 percent of abortions are performed after 21 weeks of pregnancy, said Amy Friedrich-Kalnick, federal policy director at the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that supports abortion rights.
“These sensational claims are not based on evidence, facts or medical standards,” Friedrich-Kalnick said. “Misrepresenting late-term abortion care and stigmatizing abortion only increases the risks to patients and health care providers.”
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New Republican platform closely resembles Trump’s campaign message
Trump’s conflict with the right flank intensified last Monday when the Republican National Committee approved a stripped-down convention platform filled with Trump’s standard rally lines.
The Republican platform states that the party is “opposed to late-term abortion,” but says states are “free” to enact laws regulating the procedure.
The 16-page document, reduced from 66 pages in 2016 and 2020, removes a call for a nationwide abortion ban from the previous platform. But the new platform also says Republicans believe “the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees that no person shall be denied life or liberty without due process.”
This is a headline argument the far right has always made about abortion, equating a foetus at a very early stage of development with the human beings walking around at party conferences today.
Here, too, Trump is trying to appease his supporters on an issue they are passionate about but which he sees as a threat to his bid for a second term.
The truth about Trump is that he only believes in the present moment.
Trump is essentially a shameless salesman, always seeing himself as the best thing he can sell. He has no ideological core. No policy is more important to him than winning the election.
That’s why his insistence that states should decide whether to legalize abortion makes no sense: Trump is a man who cares only about the present, with little regard for the future or for what he has said in the past.
A Gallup poll released last month found that half of voters believe abortion should be legal under certain circumstances, while 35% believe it should be legal under all circumstances and 12% say it should always be illegal. No wonder Trump is scared.
Imagine this: Trump wins in November, is inaugurated as president in January and Republicans take control of the House and the Senate — an outcome that has become a likely one for 2025 over the past month as Biden falters and Democrats squabble over the party’s fate.
If Republicans passed a national abortion ban, do you think President Trump would sign it into law or stick to the promise he made during the campaign?
Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Chris Brennan on X (formerly Twitter): @ByChrisBrennan
