Trump: Whether Women Are People or Property Is a States' Rights Issue
How the media reported Trump's statement vs how I would report it.
“I was proudly the person responsible for ending something that all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and in fact demanded be ended, Roe v Wade. … My view is that now that we have abortion where EVERYBODY wanted it from a legal standpoint … You must follow your heart or, in many cases, your religion or your faith.”
– Donald J. Trump, April 8, 2024
Rather than focusing their reporting about the video on abortion that Donald Trump posted on social media this morning on its one truth (that he is proud and responsible for taking away women’s ownership of their bodies), its outrageous lies (everyone on both sides was demanding that Roe be ended; we now have abortion law where everyone wanted it), and its nonsensical statement that everyone should follow their heart or faith when he was endorsing making that impossible), the mainstream media were unanimous in headlining another key point about his position: that he said it is a matter of states’ rights. I’ll return to what that means in a moment, but here are the headlines used by various mainstream media outlets to characterize what Trump said:
Trump says abortion law should be left to the states
Trump says abortion should be left to states, declines to endorse national limit
Trump Says States Should Chart Their Own Path on Abortion
NBC:
Trump says abortion restrictions should be left to states, dodging a national ban
CBS:
Donald Trump says abortion should be left up to states, sidestepping calls to back federal restrictions
ABC:
Trump says abortion should be a states’ rights issue, Republicans ‘must also win elections’
CNN:
Trump says abortion legislation should be left to states
NPR:
Trump declines to back nationwide abortion ban, says it should be left to the states
Trump says abortion is up to the states, declines to endorse national limit
Here’s how I think what he said should have been reported:
Trump Says, in essence: In their great wisdom, our Founding Fathers left who should be enslaved up to the states, and it worked well until that Lincoln guy came along. Let’s make America great again by going back to having slave states and free states!
This morning, as part of his “Make America Gilead” campaign, with his face makeup looking even more outlandishly orange than usual against the pale gray portions of his face his cosmetologist missed, Donald J. Trump (Fascist, FL), the presumptive presidential nominee of the Anti-Republic Party, came out foursquare in favor of women being categorized as property, not people, though only in states that want to enslave them.
In a lie-laced video on his social media platform, Untruth Antisocial, which became part of DJT more than a week ago and debuted with a valuation of $11 billion (roughly $15 billion more than the company’s actual value), the former occupant of the White House indicated that the question of whether women are property or people should, as was the similar question of whether people of African ancestry are human beings or should be enslaved, be left to each state to determine.
Here is a properly annotated quotation from his statement:
“I was proudly the person responsible for ending [true] something that all legal scholars, both sides, wanted [lie] and in fact demanded be ended [lie], Roe v Wade. … My view is that now that we have abortion where EVERYBODY wanted it from a legal standpoint [absurd lie] … You must follow your heart or, in many cases, your religion or your faith [except in states that agree with my wholly owned political party’s conviction that women must be put back in their proper place and they take away your human rights].”
With his statement this morning, Mr. Trump has tied himself to the most extreme abortion bans in the most anti-women states. He will be pressed on whether he agrees with the draconian 6-week ban that will go into effect soon in his now home state, Florida. He will also be pressed to answer the question of how he will he vote on the referendum in Florida.
Maybe he will move his official residence back to New York or to New Jersey to avoid answering that question.
The Biden campaign’s rapid response team reacted quickly, posting on X: “Donald Trump is endorsing every single abortion ban in the states, including abortion bans with no exceptions. And he’s bragging about his role in creating this hellscape.”