President Biden and other Democrats moved quickly Friday to criticize former president Donald Trump over a report that he prefers a 16-week national abortion ban with a few exceptions, underscoring the extent to which Democrats hope to seize on the issue in November.<\/p>\n
Biden\u2019s campaign said the story from the New York Times confirmed their long-held suspicions that Trump would pursue a federal ban after appointing the Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022. Trump\u2019s campaign called the report \u201cfake news.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, after being the one responsible for taking away women\u2019s freedom \u2026 Trump is running scared,\u201d Biden said in a statement. \u201cHe\u2019s afraid the women of America are going to hold him responsible for taking away their rights and endangering their rights at the ballot box in November. Which is exactly what\u2019s going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Times reported that Trump has privately told associates he \u201clikes the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban with three exceptions, in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother.\u201d Trump\u2019s campaign swiftly pushed back against the story.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs President Trump has stated, he would sit down with both sides and negotiate a deal that everyone will be happy with,\u201d Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, without elaborating on such a deal.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s team was frustrated by the Times story and said no decision had been made on a national ban. One person who has spoken with Trump on several occasions about abortion said the former president repeatedly said he was not going to be tied down to a specific number of weeks. Another person who met with Trump on the issue late last year said he suggested a 16-week ban as a potential plan, but was noncommittal to backing any sort of ban. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was clear with us when he met with us that he wasn\u2019t going to let them tie him down,\u201d the first person said.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Democrats made the most of the Times story. In addition to Biden\u2019s statement, his campaign held an afternoon call with reporters where his campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, proclaimed that Trump \u201cjust came clean.\u201d State parties and Democratic officials in battleground states \u2014 including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer \u2014 tore into Trump while highlighting the Times report.<\/p>\n
The rapid reaction from Democrats showed just how much they see abortion as a winning issue this year, especially as Republicans continue to look for a united message and suffer electoral defeats since the Roe decision. Abortion was one of Democrats\u2019 leading issues in a special election for a New York House seat that they captured Tuesday.<\/p>\n
A prominent Democrat with knowledge of the Biden campaign\u2019s strategy \u2014 who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal discussions \u2014 said they plan to attack Trump on abortion relentlessly this fall, particularly with news clips where he praises the end of Roe, and view it as one of the campaign\u2019s top three issues.<\/p>\n
Since the overturning of Roe, Trump has boasted about selecting the judges who helped make the decision, which returned the issue of abortion rights to the states. At the same time, he has publicly demurred on the question of a federal ban and sought to distance himself from some GOP-led states that have passed bans without exceptions. Trump faced some criticism when he attacked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for signing a six-week ban while DeSantis was competing in the GOP primary, but most of the antiabortion community has continued to support him.<\/p>\n
Trump has previously emphasized his support for the three exceptions, suggesting the GOP should campaign on them to mitigate its losses. The former president has mocked candidates by name who didn\u2019t say they were for exceptions and has instructed Republicans that they should bring up exceptions before anything else when talking about the issue.<\/p>\n
Mini Timmaraju, president and chief executive of Reproductive Freedom for All, told reporters on the Biden campaign call that the exceptions proposed by Trump are \u201cdesigned not to work, and they\u2019re impossible to enforce in these incredibly draconian states with these extreme bans.\u201d Timmaraju added that Trump was \u201ctrying to masquerade as a moderate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to make him own every inch of this crisis he created,\u201d Timmaraju said.<\/p>\n
Conservative and antiabortion leaders were taken aback by the Times story because they had been told by Trump he was not going to be tied down and were trying to figure out on Friday if his position had changed, according to two people in the movement.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is thinking about a general election,\u201d one Trump adviser said, when describing why Trump has not taken a position on abortion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe strongly agree with President Trump on protecting babies from abortion violence at 16 weeks when they feel pain,\u201d SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Trump has repeatedly talked about abortion with advisers and has been pitched on a 15-week ban by figures such as former Trump White House adviser Kellyanne Conway and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). But because he knows it is a tricky political issue, he usually avoids it in public and calls it the \u201cA-word\u201d in private.<\/p>\n
Additionally, people close to him said he did not feel pressure from the right to support a national ban so far. He has consistently dominated the GOP primary, where former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley is his last serious opponent but still faces long odds.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
President Biden and other Democrats moved quickly Friday to criticize former president Donald Trump over a report that he prefers a 16-week national abortion ban with a few exceptions, underscoring the extent to which Democrats hope to seize on the issue in November. Biden\u2019s campaign said the story from the New York Times confirmed their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1184,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}