by Frank Holmes, reporter
To many mainstream pundits’ surprise, President Donald Trump has romped through the 2024 Republican presidential primaries without much competition, but he may have found his most difficult opponent: himself.
Trump still holds an enormous, double-digit lead over the rest of the field, but he appears to have hit his first stumble out of the gate: Trump went on the legacy media and took on the pro-life base of his party.
In an interview Sunday on Meet the Press, Trump told host Kristen Welker that he would negotiate a deal on abortion that would make both sides “very happy,” probably around banning extreme, late-term abortions… and that’s it.
Trump then attacked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for signing a ban on abortions starting at six weeks, calling the pro-life law “a terrible thing.”
NEW: Trump says he will compromise with Democrats on abortion so that they’re nice to him: “Both sides are going to like me.”
Then he says it’s “a terrible thing” babies with heartbeats are protected in Iowa, Florida, and South Carolina.@RonDeSantis will NEVER sell out… pic.twitter.com/8c5zpGhVjW
— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) September 17, 2023
Trump has tried to walk a fine line, as someone who originally described himself as pro-choice but pivoted before entering the 2016 primaries. He went on to name three of the five Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
But for months, he’s said the GOP blew the “big red wave” during the midterms by being too outspoken on the issue, which he mostly wants to avoid, or at least talk about as a gigantic “negotiation” he’ll oversee between the two sides.
That didn’t sit well with pro-life voters—the overwhelming majority of his party—who spent decades trying to overturn Roe so that they could enact legislation ultimately protecting unborn children from the abortionist’s scalpel.
“You cannot ignore the human rights issue of our time and still get our vote,” warned Kristi Hamrick, chief policy strategist with Students for Life of America.
Laws like the one DeSantis signed “have saved thousands of babies,” said Lila Rose, who founded the undercover abortion investigative group Live Action. “But Trump wants to compromise on babies’ lives so pro-abort Dems ‘like him.’”
The remarks flopped in a big way—and Ron DeSantis did all he could to make sure they kept echoing in GOP primary voters’ ears.
“If he’s going into this saying he’s going to make the Democrats happy with respect to right to life, I think all pro-lifers should know that he’s preparing to sell you out,” DeSantis told Radio Iowa the next day.
Trump’s comments show that the former president is “changing in a way that is not consistent with the values of the people in Iowa,” where the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses happen.
https://twitter.com/joshpower80/status/1703875131112641013
Trump’s remarks also rubbed other Republican leaders the wrong way, like Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, who signed a similar pro-life bill that says abortions cannot take place once an unborn baby’s heart begins to beat, about six weeks into the pregnancy.
“It’s never a ‘terrible thing’ to protect innocent life,” Reynolds posted on X, formerly called Twitter.
It’s never a “terrible thing” to protect innocent life. I’m proud of the fetal heartbeat bill the Iowa legislature passed and I signed in 2018 and again earlier this year.
— Kim Reynolds (@KimReynoldsIA) September 19, 2023
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who also enacted a law like that of neighboring Florida, bragged that “in addition to passing the heartbeat bill, Georgia has proudly protected and valued life through implementing adoption and foster care reforms, and combatting human trafficking —and will continue to do so as long as I’m governor.”
There’s nothing “terrible” about standing up for life.
In addition to passing the heartbeat bill, Georgia has proudly protected and valued life through implementing adoption and foster care reforms, and combatting human trafficking – and will continue to do so as long as I’m…
— Brian Kemp (@BrianKempGA) September 19, 2023
That could be Trump’s first real mistake with his own party, since 90 percent of Republicans are pro-life, according to a Gallup poll.
Trump’s actions raise the same question that surrounds almost every move the president makes: Is this dangerous—or is Trump playing 3-D chess?
The one person who thinks Trump’s abortion stance was brilliant sits in the White House.
“Biden world fears Trump may muddy the waters on abortion,” screamed a headline at Politico, the Beltway’s favorite political website.
Biden’s advisors saw Trump’s moderate statements on abortion as “a flashing red light,” the website reported. “Aides and allies of the president quickly moved to try and shape the media’s coverage of the comments.”
Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, sent out an email asking campaign surrogates to start “calling out this extremely irresponsible coverage of Trump’s abortion comments to Welker.”
“Trump is trying to hedge on abortion, and reporters are letting him off the hook,” the Biden campaign claimed.
The Democratic Party is sending out press releases officially claiming “Trump Is the Reason Women Can’t Get Abortions.”
Democrats sunk at least $124 million into abortion ads in the 2022 midterms, and they’re gearing up to play the same issue in 2024.
If Trump comes across as a moderate, or someone who (in his words) doesn’t “care” about the issue, that plan goes up in smoke… and so does Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, Trump knows he needs to mend fences with the pro-life voting bloc. It helps that Ron DeSantis has not yet supported any national pro-life legislation of his own, leaving him less room to attack Trump.
Trump promised to pardon the pro-life activists Biden has thrown into jail, like Mark Houck, a Catholic father arrested by federal agents with automatic weapons, or elderly pro-life sidewalk counselors arrested for protesting a D.C. abortionist’s office.
And he’s stepped up visits to Iowa, where DeSantis has focused much of his time and millions of his dollars in an effort to surprise Trump the way Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, did in 2016.
Trump plans to visit Iowa five times between now and Halloween, trying to finish stronger than he did eight years ago.
Will his strategy work? We’ll find out Jan. 15, in Des Moines.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”