As TPM has been reporting since Roe’s overturning: The electoral backlash to the Dobbs ruling has Republicans — particularly 2024 Republicans — queasy about staking out a place on abortion. And nobody has been extra obscure about what abortion coverage they’d help as president than Donald Trump.
In current weeks, some Republicans made it clear they plan to take their probabilities on a 15-week nationwide ban. Folks like Mike Pence and Glenn Younkin, for instance, are betting that Republican voters who’ve reacted aversely to excessive bans on the process in purple states, may even see the 15-week strategy as extra humane than the kind of common bans with no exceptions which have lengthy been related to the supposed “pro-life” motion.
However most have clung to anti-abortion platitudes. 2024 candidate Nikki Haley, for instance, typically raises her conservative and “pro-life” bonafides when questioned about her place on abortion. Her line was no completely different in the course of the first Republican debate, however she additionally hid behind the restrictions of the filibuster, saying it didn’t matter the place she stood on a 15-week ban as a result of it wouldn’t get 60 votes within the Senate.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has maintained he can be a “pro-life” president if elected, however on the marketing campaign path he has refused to outright embrace the intense 6-week ban he signed into legislation in his state earlier this 12 months.
Trump has been probably the most deliberately hazy, although, refusing to site visitors in specifics and pointing to some Grand Plan to take a seat down with “either side” and work out some type of deal as president. He first raised this far-fetched cop out in the course of the CNN city corridor earlier this 12 months and introduced it up once more this weekend when NBC’s Kristen Welker requested him the place he stood.
“What’s going to occur is you’re going to give you various weeks or months,” Trump mentioned, including that it will lead to “peace on that concern for the primary time in 52 years.”
“You’re going to give you a quantity that’s going to make individuals blissful.”
Whereas he caught with the identical shrug towards negotiating an amorphous, unlikely deal, Trump additionally kinda sorta got here out in opposition to six-week abortion bans, however solely as a broadside to his former ally and 2024 challenger.
When requested if he thought the Florida governor had gone too far in signing his six-week abortion ban into legislation, Trump unflinchingly described it as “horrible.”
“I believe what he did is a horrible factor and a horrible mistake.”
The Greatest Of TPM Right now
Right here’s what you need to learn this night:
Trump Celebrates Rosh Hashanah With Anti-Semitic Warning To ‘Liberal Jews’
Trump Says It Was His Determination To Describe The 2020 Elections As ‘Rigged’
The ‘Biden Aliases’: How The GOP’s Scandalmongering Impressed An Armed Protest
Wisconsin GOP Risk To Impeach Protasiewicz Is Unsupported By Regulation And Undermines Judicial Independence
Yesterday’s Most Learn Story
Democrats Brace For The Greatest Abortion Supreme Courtroom Case Since Dobbs — Kate Riga
What We Are Studying
Former DOJ legal professional acted below Trump’s path, his lawyer says — WaPo
The unchanging malleability of Donald Trump — WaPo
In U.S. Go to, Zelensky to Make a Case for Extra Assist, and Say Thank You — NYT
