"Unless we summon the political will to stop Trump, MAGA extremists, and reactionary judges, hundreds of millions of women will be denied their right to make the most fundamental decisions regarding their lives and bodies."
"Donald Trump and the reactionary majority on the Supreme Court have relegated women to a second-class status. It is up to all of us to reverse that result and reclaim the rights and liberties that were hard-won over the last 75 years."
"Trump will say anything one day and change it completely the next. His only North Star is his own self-interest. His instincts now tell him abortion is a losing issue so he’s playing this game as part of his stay-out-of-jail campaign."
"The video did, though, make an enormously interesting and unintended point: Trump is communicating with voters outside his carefully curated bubble almost exclusively through videos, even on a topic as important as abortion."
"At rallies, his speeches have become erratic and wandering, with occasional slurred words, and observers have wondered how he would present to more general audiences. It appears that his team has concluded that he will not present well and that general audiences must see him in carefully curated settings, like this apparently heavily edited video."
"Since the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs and overturned Roe v. Wade, Trump has been bragging that he put the justices on the court who ended the era of legal abortion in America. And he’s right: That’s exactly what he did."
"And he did it not because he has any great personal objection to abortion — Trump, I suspect, does not care one whit about abortion rights one way or the other — but because he owed a solid to the conservative misogynists who elected him and he wanted to cement in their loyalty.
Now, he has a different immediate want: To win an election."
"Let us all pause for a moment to take notice of how gracefully his argument runs over its own feet. Now that we have a national solution, it’s time to leave it to the states. ...
Significantly, he ran and hid on the subject of a national ban. As has become customary, he hid behind outright lies."
"There is one person responsible for millions of women losing a 50-year constitutional right to control their own body: Donald J. Trump. In fact, Trump has continually bragged since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022 that he did that."
"And in case anyone forgot that Trump is the reason women were stripped of a constitutional right, he reminded us again Monday when he released his informercial on abortion by bragging, 'I was proudly the person responsible” for ending Roe v. Wade.' …
Trump released his video on Monday thinking that the women of America are as easily conned as the MAGA faithful. They are not."
"Here he is, in April 2024, stuck with a position that’s politically unpopular and clearly hurt Republicans in 2022 in key swing states. What’s to be done?
Maneuver. Obfuscate. Lie. And ultimately retreat to a position of states’ rights. Which is what Trump did, or tried to do, yesterday."
"Trump hoped, as he said, to take the issue off the table. But it turns out it’s not so easy to hand wave away a 5-4 Supreme Court decision overturning an almost 50-year-old precedent on an issue a lot of voters care about."
"It takes quite an ego to tell pro-lifers that your re-election is paramount and that the fate of unborn children is a distraction. But that’s the kind of guy Trump is. ...
He doesn’t really care about abortion. He doesn’t value babies any more than he values women. He’s a danger not just to one party or one group but to everyone, because there’s no one he won’t betray."
"Trump’s dual play of claiming credit for overturning Roe while abandoning for the moment his abortion-foe allies, fooled a few journalists (not all), but most people saw it clearly for what it was.
Trump will try to low-key his anti-abortion position until he’s re-elected, then of course all bets are off on what new draconian measures he will support in order to pay back the supporters he temporarily sidelined."
"Two things are undoubtedly true: Donald Trump has no 'religious conviction' leading him to oppose abortion (The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell says voters often assume that he’s paid for abortions in her focus groups), and he knows the Dobbs decision and everything stemming from it make for terrible electoral politics for his party.
Those two truths led to his long and rambling video statement Monday…."
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