Donald Trump spoke a conservative event last week and shared some thoughts on the politics of abortion rights. As the former president put it, “explaining” the conservative position “properly” is “an extremely important thing.”
He added that he’s heard many Republicans talk about their positions, “and they don’t know what to say.”
There was a degree of irony to the comments — because if anyone is struggling to know what to say about abortion, it’s Trump.
This came into sharper focus over the weekend, when Trump appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and said all kinds of strange things about the issue. The Republican — after complaining that members of his own party “speak very inarticulately” about abortion — said he’d somehow figure out a way to make “both sides“ happy with a compromise solution he didn’t identify.
Just as notably, the former president went on to denounce plans to ban abortions “without the exceptions” and described Florida’s unpopular six-week ban as a “terrible thing.”
This, predictably, has created a new political mess — Trump’s rivals are telling the party’s socially conservative base that the former president isn’t a reliable enough ally on the issue — which the GOP frontrunner is clearly aware of. The Hill reported overnight:
Former President Trump on Tuesday sought to clarify his position on abortion after facing a backlash from some conservatives for calling Florida’s ban on the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy a “terrible thing.”
As part of a trio of missives published to his social media platform, Trump again took credit for eliminating the Roe v. Wade precedent, before arguing that Republicans have to recognize the political peril associated with the issue. But he concluded by pretending that Democrats are the “true Radicals” because they support, among other things, “the killing of babies … even after birth.”
While I appreciate the appeal of the partisan…
Read the full article here
