A Quick One While He’s Awry

Trump’s abortion bullshit demands not more attention, but less

I will be brief, not just because I am tired and lazy, but because there are some subjects that suffer from over-analysis and this is definitely one of them.

You are no doubt aware that Donald Trump recently yammered some words about abortion. As is usual with his yammerings, these were cleaned up by the prestige press — e.g., CNN’s “Trump says abortion legislation should be left to states,” which is absurdly reductive (and, like most reductions of his yammerings, does them the great favor by making them seem, by condensing them, clearer than they really are).

I could direct you to smarter analysts like Jamelle Bouie on this but, while he’s always worth reading, I fear spending the length of a New York Times column on it is counterproductive.

It is, I guess, worth noting the main problem: That “leaving it to the states,” when it comes to the Dobbs decision that Trump’s SCOTUS appointments made possible, is not a mere low-impact transfer of legal authority from one bureaucracy to another, but the removal of heretofore accepted Constitutional protection of a basic civil right — very much like repealing the Thirteenth or Nineteenth Amendments (which, if these guys are allowed to get traction, will be among their next steps). Portraying this as a states’-rights issue is exactly like the once-common portrayal of segregation as a states’-rights issue, and as bogus.

Here’s another level to Trump’s bullshit parfait: Pretending there is a meaningful disagreement between him and hardcore anti-abortion conservative groups like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America about it. It’s all kayfabe. Here I will cite Amanda Marcotte because she understands the game and gets right to the point — “Evangelicals won’t be bothered by Trump's abortion gambit — they know he’s lying.”

Except I wouldn’t limit this to evangelicals. Every alleged disagreement between Trump and whatever rightwing group mouths off on this should be treated as entirely tactical and in no wise moral — because every one of them stands to gain, and knows they stand to gain, from Trump’s charade; every discussion of the alleged wiggle room between “jail every bitch who dares have an abortion” and “let the states decide whether to jail every bitch who dares have an abortion” further legitimizes the nationwide criminalization of reproductive rights.

So here is how I would deal with it: Simply acknowledge what every good-faith observer knows to be true — Trump lies about everything and, especially given the electoral pressure on this subject, he is certainly lying about this. Let that fat piece of shit argue contrary-wise if he wishes. The clotted glurge excreted from his pie-hole will be received as manna from heaven by those who always receive it as such; the rest of us — which is to say, most Americans — will know better.

And that’s really all there is to it.