A week after Donald Trump hinted at an announcement on a national abortion ban, he seems desperate to put the issue to bed.
“By allowing the States to make their decision … we have taken the Abortion Issue largely out of play,” Trump posted Monday on Truth Social, following a video announcement in which he said individual states should decide the issue.
Good luck with that. Even within his own camp, Trump’s announcement angered anti-abortion zealots, such as former Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
But frankly, that’s the least of the Trump campaign’s worries. After Trump posted, the Biden-Harris campaign immediately flooded the zone with a campaign designed to make Trump pay for taking a position he hoped would blunt the matter moving forward.
One message, carried by President Joe Biden himself: Don’t trust Trump.
“If MAGA Republicans put a federal ban on his desk, he’d sign it!” Biden said in his own video response to Trump’s post.
Biden’s final message to voters in the post was a pledge to protect abortion rights nationwide.
“Donald Trump is the reason Roe was ended. If you reelect me, I’ll be the reason why it’s restored,” he vowed.
The Biden campaign’s other message, which they have been pushing for months, is simple: “Trump did this.” It’s a great line precisely because it’s short, sticky, and true—rightly saddling Trump with every abortion ban and tragic denial of medical care that has ensued since the extremist judges he appointed overturned Roe v. Wade.
“Trump did this” were the final words, appearing in white text against a black background, of a wrenching ad the Biden campaign dropped on Monday after Trump’s announcement. The ad centers on a Texas couple that suffered the miscarriage of a daughter they desperately wanted. The woman, Amanda Zurawski, was denied the standard medical care of an abortion, developed sepsis, nearly died twice, and may be infertile now.
The precursor to the ad came last week when the Biden campaign released a 30-second spot letting Trump, in his own words, take credit for overturning Roe—a reminder to voters about who’s responsible for these extremist bans.
“Because for 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated—and I did it,” Trump brags in the ad.
On Monday, the Biden-Harris campaign’s rapid-response X account also deployed a thread crediting Trump with every ban in the country, including in Georgia, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Florida. On Tuesday, following the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a near-total abortion ban enacted in 1864, the account again tweeted out video of Trump endorsing the right of states to enact differing bans. It was juxtaposed with video of an MSNBC anchor reporting, “We’re following news out of Arizona, where the state Supreme Court just made a monumental abortion decision, prospectively enforcing a 150-year-old mandate … outright banning abortion at any point, by penalty of prison.”
It’s impossible to know all the machinations that went into Trump ending up where he did on abortion this week, but he and his campaign clearly concluded a states’ rights stance was the least bad option for him to take—allowing anti-abortion extremists to have their way state-by-state while hopefully not entirely alienating what remains of the GOP’s more moderate suburban base.
From the moment the Florida Supreme Court decisions landed last week greenlighting a restrictive abortion ban while also approving an abortion rights ballot measure in November, Team Biden pounced—dropping an ad, holding press calls, and releasing a strategy memo to reporters arguing that Florida was now in play in the presidential contest.
The Biden campaign was going to make GOP-controlled Florida, where Trump himself will be voting on abortion access as a state resident, the center of gravity for Republican Party overreach on the matter. Biden’s aggressive posture made it exceedingly difficult for Trump not to articulate a stance. In a vacuum, the Biden campaign was going to saddle Trump and Republicans with the threat of the 15-week national abortion ban Trump had previewed.
It was a can’t-lose situation for Team Biden. Whether Trump backed a national ban, supported the right of states to decide the matter, or dodged, the Biden campaign would tag him with overturning Roe and promise to restore abortion care nationwide.
Until now, Trump has largely gotten a pass on abortion—pleasing anti-abortion zealots by appointing justices who overturned abortion rights while also assuaging some GOP moderates who view him as socially liberal.
Now that Trump is pinned down, the Biden campaign will be thumping him on three messages moving forward: 1) Trump overturned Roe; 2) He’s responsible for state bans (“Trump did this”); and 3) Biden will restore abortion access—Trump won’t.
Kerry and Markos talk about Florida, its strict abortion ban, and Democratic challengers’ chances in the Sunshine State.