Fully contradicting one of the most consequential outcomes of his entire presidency, Donald Trump reportedly believes that he can run as a “moderate” on abortion in 2024.
And Hillary Clinton herself is in disbelief.
“He thinks women are going to fall for this?” the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee wondered aloud Wednesday, in response to a Rolling Stone report describing Trump’s apparent plan to pull the mother of all flip-flops.
As president, Trump nominated three conservative Supreme Court justices who were instrumental in overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, abolishing federal protections for abortion and dramatically limiting access to reproductive health care.
Just this summer, Trump was bragging about his anti-abortion bona fides in an address during the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual conference.
“I’m proud to be the most pro-life president in American history,” he told attendees of the conservative gathering.
“From my first day in office, I took historic action to protect the unborn, very historic. Nobody else did anything near what we did.”
Other candidates vying for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination have likewise endorsed restrictive abortion policies, with some, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, couching them in terms of protecting states’ rights to self-govern. (Despite this framing, many Republican-led states have nevertheless sought to forge ahead with abortion bans that explicitly overrule the will of the voters.)
“My view is this: I want the people, not the politicians, to make this decision. So let people vote in the states,” Christie said Tuesday while rebuffing the idea of a six-week federal abortion ban. “We see a great exercise in democracy going on all across this country.”
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