I’m still seeing articles about how Dems or the White House are worried Trump is going to muddy the waters about abortion. Worry and reacting to Donald Trump is in fact not the only way to encounter life. Democrats should be happy to spend the next fourteen months debating with Donald Trump whether he wants a 6 week national ban or an 8 week ban. If he’s really forgotten that he’s the “most pro-life President ever” who single-handedly overturned Roe by appointing three diehard abortion opponents, then by all means get him to demand his obediant and gerrymandered state legislatures to ditch all the state bans altogether.
One article I see has it that “aides and allies of the president quickly moved to try and shape the media’s cover of the comments. Mainly, they admonished stories that didn’t – in their estimation – note that Trump” was the reason all the bans exist in the first place. But you’ll only get so far admonishing bad reporters. You need to provide more to report and engaging Trump directly is what does that.
As we noted yesterday, you’re not going to accomplish anything allowing Trump to say a series of nonsensical things, imagining reporters are going to do anything about or thinking you’re going to win some notional logical argument. You need to run right into the fire and give reporters something to report. Let’s talk about which kind of ban Trump wants. If he wants no bans, what’s he going to do about it? Most of Trump’s power comes from his razzmatazz getting people to think there are no rules, that he can do anything he wants, retool reality without consequences. That only happens when his opponents get cowed. We’ve seen very clearly over the last year that a huge swath of the population cares a great deal about abortion rights. They won’t easily be fooled.