Trump campaigned in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Saturday, telling a rally that women will “no longer be thinking about abortion” if he’s elected in November. “I will protect women at a level never seen before,” he said.Alex Brandon/AP
After reporting by ProPublica this week revealed that two women in Georgia died as a result of abortion bans, Trump is feeling the heat.
The stories led to widespread condemnation, including from Vice President Kamala Harris, who—as my colleague Pema Levy wrote—highlighted the stories of the women, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, during campaign stops in Georgia and Michigan this week. “The reality is, for every story we hear of the suffering under Trump abortion bans, there are so many of the stories we’re not hearing,” Harris said.
This is probably why Trump—who appointed three of the five Supreme Court justices who overruled Roe v. Wade—had a late-night, all-caps meltdown on Truth Social on Friday, in which he implausibly promised that American women will be better off if he is reelected. “WOMEN WILL BE HAPPY, HEALTHY, CONFIDENT AND FREE!” Trump posted. “YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION,” he added, before repeating his well-worn litany of lies—including that everyone wanted Roe overruled and that Democrats are executing babies after birth (that’s a crime known as homicide… and it’s not happening).
“I WILL PROTECT WOMEN AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE,” Trump concluded. “THEY WILL FINALLY BE HEALTHY, HOPEFUL, SAFE, AND SECURE. THEIR LIVES WILL BE HAPPY, BEAUTIFUL, AND GREAT AGAIN!”
On Saturday, Trump gave an in-person version of the rant, at a rally in North Carolina (at which Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson was not present, in the wake of his latest epic scandal).
All this is a bit rich coming from a man who was found liable for sexual assault; caught on tape bragging about committing sexual assault; found guilty of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to hide that he paid off a porn star with whom he allegedly had sex while his wife, Melania, was tending to their four-month-old son; and who has a known history of making misogynistic attacks on women he finds threatening. And as for Trump’s claim that women will “no longer be thinking about abortion” if he’s reelected? That’s unlikely, given that he could very well enact a federal abortion ban, and given that abortion bans nationwide have unleashed a health care apocalypse and put vulnerable women in even greater danger.
As Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.) put it on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday morning, “That’s just ludicrous.”
“This guy just doesn’t understand what the average woman is confronting in her life in this country,” she added.
“Trump thinks he can control women—he’s wrong,” Harris-Walz campaign Senior Spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement. “He’s terrified that women across the country will vote like our lives and freedoms depend on it, because they do. Women aren’t stupid. We see Trump’s Project 2025 agenda for what it is: an extreme plan to ban abortion nationwide and threaten access to IVF and birth control.”
Trump’s alleged conversion to feminism did not appear to last long: About 12 hours after his pledge to make women great again, he called MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle a “‘dumb as a rock’ bimbo” in another rant.