Hello friends, and welcome to a Surge unlike any other. Well, we guess it’s a lot like the other Surges (perfect).
This week, hoo boy, we’ve got it all. We’ve got Trump. We’ve got abortion. We’ve got Trump and abortion. We’ve got Trump, Kari Lake, abortion, and Arizona. We’ve got a bullet in some guy’s arm. We’ve got questions about the bullet in the arm. We’ve got Lindsey Graham and abortion. What’ve you got, reader? You’ve got some content to read.
That was weird. Anyway …
By Jim Newell
There is a constant to Donald Trump’s actual belief on abortion (or any) policy: He truly doesn’t care. Banned, legal up to a certain number of weeks, mandatory—whatever it is that will get him closer to restoring that Diet Coke button to the Resolute desk, that’s his position. In his first campaign and his presidential term, that meant taking the traditional party line on abortion to prove his bona fides to social conservatives. That effort eventually culminated in the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Now that the Dobbs decision and its ever-rolling fallout have turned abortion into Republicans’ top liability this year, though, he’s on defense. In a message this week, Trump said abortion policy should be left to each individual state—i.e., that he wouldn’t campaign on national abortion limits—because “we have to win.” Will this inoculation take? It’s definitely better than campaigning on a national abortion ban. But it won’t at all mitigate Democrats’ plans to spend hundreds of millions, or billions, on the issue. Saying he won’t pursue a legislative abortion ban as president doesn’t address what he or his appointees might push through the executive branch. And he’s on tape over and over again—including the tape where he made this week’s announcement—bragging about how he killed Roe v. Wade through his judicial appointments, which happens to be true. Trump and his orbit have already given Democrats plenty to work with.
Cults are a sweet deal so long as you’re the leader, and one of the beautiful things about being Donald Trump is that he can make decisions like this without fear of blowback from his side. Sure, there’s blowback, but he doesn’t have to fear it. For example, some members of the coalition, like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America president Marjorie Dannenfelser and South........