Remember how Donald Trump, talking to two different reporters on Thursday, was saying that he planned to vote against Florida’s restrictive six-week abortion ban?
The first sign of trouble on that came when his campaign issued a statement later in the day walking back Trump’s comments.
And then on Friday, Trump, cowing to the backlash from his far-right evangelical base, tucked his tail between his legs.
Even as he told Fox News in an interview that “you need more time than six weeks,” he confirmed that he will still be voting “no” on the proposed ballot measure that would overturn the six-week ban.
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The flip-flop came after Trump found himself buried by evangelical critics.
“If Donald Trump loses, today is the day he lost,” conservative commentator Erick Erickson wrote on Twitter in response to Trump’s first signal, that he would be voting to overturn the six-week ban.
“The committed pro-life community could turn a blind eye, in part, to national abortion issues. But for Trump to weigh in on Florida as he did will be a bridge too far for too many,” Erickson wrote.
Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote that Trump’s opposition to the six-week ban seemed “almost calculated to alienate prolife voters.”
“Pro-life Christian voters are going to have to think clearly, honestly, and soberly about our challenge in this election – starting at the top of the ticket,” Mohler wrote.
“President Trump has consistently opposed abortions after five months of pregnancy. Amendment 4 would allow abortion past this point. Voting for Amendment 4 completely undermines his position,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement.
“We strongly support Florida’s current heartbeat law. For anyone who believes in drawing a different line, they still must vote against Amendment 4, unless they don’t want a line at all. Amendment 4 would lock unlimited abortion into the state constitution, preventing the Florida legislature from enacting any changes,” Dannenfelser said.
So, there you go.
The effort by the now-chastened Trump to reach out to non-evangelical women who have been the electoral base for Democrats since the Trump Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 is officially at its end.
Since the Trump Court handed down its ruling in the Dobbs case two summers ago, 23 Republican-majority state legislatures have either outright banned or at the least put severe restrictions on women’s reproductive rights.
Democrats, vowing to pass federal legislation to restore Roe protections, have seized on the blowback, holding back the predicted “red wave” in the 2022 congressional midterms, and nearly sweeping the off-year state elections in the 2023 cycle.
Trump was trying to do a reach-out to voters who think the Dobbs decision that reversed Roe went too far, but in doing that, he risked losing the evangelical voters who had pushed for the Roe reversal for 50 years, and comprise a significant chunk of Trump’s voting base.
To be fair, what Trump was trying to do there was doomed to failure.
“American women are not stupid, and we are not going to trust the futures of our daughters and granddaughters to two men who have openly bragged about blocking access to abortion for women all across this country,” U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said earlier this week in an interview on MSNBC, illustrating that point.
“Today, 30 percent of all women live in states that effectively ban abortion. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance in the White House, it won’t be 30 percent, it’ll be 100 percent,” Warren said. “The only way that we’re going to protect access to abortion is to have a Democratic Congress send a bill to Kamala Harris. She will sign it into law. And then we will restore a right to half the population in this country. And no longer will a women have to go into an emergency room and be told she’s not near enough death to get the medical treatment that she needs.”
Video: Donald Trump flip-flops on abortion ban
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Chris Graham
