Trump tells the same abortion lie because he will lose with the truth
Trump knows that repeating such lies can embed them in his base of supporters and then spread them to undecided voters who don’t know they’re being told a lie.
CNN presidential debate: Trump and Biden argue about abortion rights
Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden debate abortion and Roe v. Wade in the CNN presidential debate.
Former President Donald Trump has a problem. A seditious lie is usually his first solution to any dilemma.
This is what his messages on abortion show us.
Trump likes to boast about appointing the three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn constitutional protections for abortion in June 2022. But he knows from that year’s midterm elections that the abortion ruling motivated angry voters who wanted to punish Republicans for it.
As the Republican National Convention begins in Milwaukee this week, Trump is now insisting that abortion should be regulated by states, while rejecting Democratic accusations that a second term would lead to a nationwide abortion ban.
And that’s exactly where Trump’s problem lies: Many of his right-wing supporters are calling for a nationwide ban on abortion and cannot stand it when Trump tries to distance himself from it.
Trump’s insane solution is to claim that President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are committed to making abortion possible “even after birth.”
That’s not true. But Trump’s most loyal supporters have shown us that they don’t care about the truth when presented with inflammatory lies that they want to swallow. And this Trump lie, which he has been dishing out since 2016, is playing well with them and perhaps easing the pressure on him from the right.
Trump’s campaign team could not answer why they were lying about abortion
During the debate last month, Trump repeated this lie, saying on stage with Biden about the Democrats: “Their problem is that they are radical, because they will take the life of a child in the eighth month, in the ninth month, and even after birth.”
Biden, who looked lost for most of the debate, responded by criticizing Trump for helping to repeal abortion protections, but said nothing to refute his lie that Democrats supported infanticide. It was an easy deception that Trump slowly laid out for Biden, and Biden couldn’t even pull a punch.
I asked the Trump campaign last week for evidence to support its claim that Democrats support the killing of newborns. I asked for specific examples of states that allow abortions “even after birth” and specific examples where such abortions have actually been performed.
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Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s national press secretary, responded without providing any examples and simply repeated his claim from the debate while providing a list of cases in which Biden and other Democrats supported abortion rights.
When I asked the Biden team for its position on the issue, it sent me five examples of media reports from 2020, 2022 and 2024, including a CNN fact-checking article from last month, that effortlessly refute Trump’s claim.
Trump doesn’t let facts stop him from telling a good campaign lie
Trump knows that repeating such lies can embed them in his base of supporters and then spread them to undecided voters who don’t know they’re being told a lie.
Katie Rodihan, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood, called Trump’s claim “pure propaganda.”
“What Trump is describing is infanticide, which is already illegal, and it is dangerous and offensive to suggest otherwise,” Rodihan told me. “Abortions do not occur after birth.”
Third-trimester abortions, Rodihan added, are “often the result of catastrophic medical diagnoses.”
In such cases, the fetus is seriously ill and probably has no chance of survival, or the pregnant woman’s life is in danger because of the pregnancy. The idea that someone who was pregnant for nine months would simply give up at the last moment is absurd.
Amy Friedrich-Karnik, director of federal policy at the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that advocates for abortion rights, pointed out that less than 1% of abortions occur at 21 weeks or later.
“These types of inflammatory claims have no basis in evidence, facts or medical standards,” Friedrich-Karnik said. “Misrepresenting and stigmatizing abortion care later in pregnancy only serves to increase risks for patients and providers.”
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The new Republican platform is more than Trump’s campaign messages
Trump’s problem with the right wing worsened last Monday when the Republican National Committee approved a slimmed-down party platform replete with standard slogans from Trump’s campaign rallies.
This Republican platform states: “We will oppose late-term abortions,” while pointing out that states are “free” to pass laws regulating this procedure.
The 16-page document, which was reduced to 66 pages in 2016 and 2020, removes the call for a national ban on abortion from the previous manifestos. However, the new manifesto also states that the Republican Party believes “that the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees that no person shall be denied life or liberty without due process of law.”
This is the headline of the narrative that the far right has always developed on the subject of abortion: it equates a fetus in the early stages of its development with a human being walking around the party conference today.
Here, too, Trump is trying to appease his electorate on an issue that is very dear to their hearts and that he sees as a threat to his chance of a second term.
The truth about Trump is that he only believes what he has to, in the moment he is in.
Trump is essentially a shameless salesman who has always considered himself his most marketable product. He lacks an ideological core. No policy means more to him than winning an election.
That’s why his claims that states should decide on abortion are meaningless. Trump lives only in the here and now, without worrying about the future or taking responsibility for what he said in the past.
A Gallup poll released last month found that half of voters think abortion should be legal under certain circumstances, while 35% think it should be legal in all circumstances and 12% want it to remain illegal forever. No wonder Trump is afraid.
Imagine: Trump wins in November and takes office in January, and Republicans take control of the House and Senate—which has become a very likely outcome for 2025 in the past month as Biden falters and Democrats squabble over the fate of the party.
Suppose Republicans pass a law banning abortion nationwide. Do you think Trump will sign that law or stick to a promise he made during the campaign?
Follow USA TODAY election columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan
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