Donald Trump posted an all-caps response on Truth Social to a debate question asked of his running mate J.D. Vance, but a columnist warned that was an attempt to mislead voters.
The former president insisted he would veto a federal abortion ban, which he claimed "everybody knows" he would not support, saying the issue should be left up to voters to decide in individual states, but The Cut's Andrea González-Ramírez dismissed his pledge as meaningless.
"The post set off a flurry of breathless media coverage characterizing Trump as changing his position on abortion and committing not to outlaw the procedure nationwide," González-Ramírez wrote. "But this is just a rhetorical trick."
Abortion foes have already tried to swap out the term "abortion ban" with the misleading terms "national minimum standard" or "national consensus," and that's the language that Vance used when he tried to sidestep questions about supporting a nationwide ban.
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"At the debate, Vance — who previously said he would 'like abortion to be illegal nationally' — claimed he has never supported a federal ban, but instead backed 'setting some national minimum standard' during his 2022 Senate campaign," González-Ramírez wrote.
The Trump administration alumni who are drafting the right-wing blueprint Project 2025 have called for called for the Department of Justice to prosecute individuals who mail abortion pills, which would essentially amount to a nationwide ban, and for the Food and Drug Administration to rescind approval for the abortion medication mifepristone.
"So, when Trump and Vance say their administration would not support a 'federal ban,' they are talking about a very specific type of abortion restriction without exceptions," González-Ramírez wrote. "Legislation that includes exceptions — or enforcing the Comstock Act — seems to be fair game, however."
The Trump campaign insists the former president would not sign a federal ban if re-elected and instead supported the rights of individual states to decide, but González-Ramírez argued that Republicans had every intention of outlawing abortion one way or another.
"Trump is obfuscating his position on the issue, just like he repeatedly lies about abortion care later in pregnancy," she wrote. "His latest post is an attempt to trick voters, and the media is clearly falling for it as well. It shouldn’t."
