During the cursed 2024 presidential campaign, close watchers of abortion rights—including Jezebel—noted that Donald Trump seemed to be faking a moderate position just so he could get elected. As we said at the time, conservative women: You were duped. Now, a new book confirms that’s exactly what happened.
They wrote that Trump received “conflicting advice” about what to do on abortion ahead of 2024, with one prominent group, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, publicly calling on presidential candidates to support a nationwide 15-week abortion ban. After the 2022 elections, Trump reportedly told an anti-abortion activist, “I have to find a way out of this issue. It’s killing us.” Still, in February of 2024, the New York Times reported that Trump had privately expressed support for a 16-week ban.
Cut to March 2024, when co-campaign manager Susie “Ice Maiden” Wiles delivered a presentation titled: “How a national abortion policy will cost Trump the election.” In short, Trump’s team said he shouldn’t embrace a national ban because it would be more restrictive than abortion laws in crucial swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin and could turn off those battleground voters. “Only electoral math matters,” the presentation said. “Bottom line: Declaring any number of weeks would play directly into Joe Biden’s hands on his simplest path to electoral victory.”
It was after that presentation that Trump released a Truth Social video where he claimed abortion should be left to the states. But in the April 2024 video, Trump also sounded deeply transactional, adding, “You must follow your heart on this issue. But remember, you must also win elections to restore our culture and, in fact, to save our country, which is currently and very sadly a nation in decline.” Trump wanted to win because he’s obsessed with power, but also because winning could keep him out of prison, so he kept repeating that he doesn’t support a national abortion ban.
Then in the June debate where then-President Joe Biden shat the bed, Trump said of abortion: “I tell people follow your heart, but you have to get elected also.” He doubled down on this stance in his only debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in September, when he said he didn’t favor a national ban because the issue was returned to the states and then refused to commit to vetoing such a law if it passed Congress. His argument was that a ban wouldn’t pass.
Speaking of Congress under now-President Trump, they can do a lot of damage to abortion access without passing a national ban.
Just last week, Trump signed the big, horrible budget bill that “defunds” large abortion providers like Planned Parenthood and Maine Family Planning for one year. Planned Parenthood said the bill could shutter nearly 200 of its clinics, 90 percent of which are in states where abortion is legal, which would eliminate one in four abortion clinics nationwide. The organization has called the bill a backdoor abortion ban. Planned Parenthood has sued the administration over the policy, which isn’t set to take effect until October. (The Supreme Court also ruled in late June that states can permanently kick abortion providers out of Medicaid, which will be another blow to abortion access.) Plus, the Food and Drug Administration has announced a review of the abortion drug mifepristone based on a junk science “report,” and reimposing any outdated restrictions would drastically limit access even in states with legal abortion.
One other detail from the CNN excerpt worth noting is that the campaign wasn’t only strategizing about abortion—it also targeted men who didn’t typically vote. After two aides found that his 2020 campaign slipped with white men compared to 2016, the campaign decided to court “low-propensity voters” rather than swing voters. That group included white men in rural areas, as well as young, non-white men who “tended not follow politics closely or receive their news from traditional media,” per the book. The strategy involved Trump going on manosphere podcasts hosted by the likes of Joe Rogan and Theo Von, and, well, it worked. Male voters split for Trump by a 12-point margin in 2024.
