During this exhausting presidential campaign, Donald Trump has been talking out of both sides of his mouth about abortion, an issue that could cost him the election. He’s been trying to convince voters that he—the person most responsible for the end of Roe v. Wade—won’t restrict abortion nationwide, while also leaving Easter eggs for anti-abortion voters and activists. And now, at the eleventh hour, a shadowy group is barging in to muddy the waters even further.
A political action committee called RBG PAC—yes, after the former Supreme Court justice—started spending $20 million Friday on a campaign claiming that Trump has been clear that he opposes a national abortion ban (he hasn’t) and that Ruth Bader Ginsburg believed that the federal government shouldn’t dictate state abortion laws (far from it). Yet the group’s website has the gall to show both their photos, along with the phrase “Great minds think alike.”
The super PAC’s Federal Election Commission paperwork was signed by May Mailman, a former Trump legal adviser and current director of the Independent Women’s Law Center, part of an umbrella organization that slaps a feminist gloss on its opposition to both abortion and transgender rights. (Mailman also served as president of the Harvard Law School chapter of the Federalist Society.) It’s a so-called pop-up PAC that started spending money only after the last financial-disclosure deadline before Election Day, meaning that we won’t know who funded it until after the election. How convenient!
AdvertisementRBG PAC reported spending $17.3 million on digital media, $1.6 million on text messages, and $1 million on printing and postage.
It’s running two 30-second ads, both featuring an Oct. 1 Truth Social post in which Trump claims he........