Crooked Media - What A Day: Abort in the storm

The Trump campaign is beginning to take its final form as we sprint to November.

• After months of refusing to give a straight answer regarding his policy views on abortion, disgraced former president Donald Trump announced on Monday that abortion laws should be determined by the states, side-stepping calling for a national ban, which even Republican strategists know is politically toxic. This coward’s position is in line with the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe vs. Wade. Trump was, of course, personally responsible for installing three justices that form the Court’s conservative majority. 

• Anti-abortion groups and anti-choice Evangelicals who ensured Trump’s victory in 2016 had mixed reactions to Monday’s statement. Marjorie Dannefenfelser, president of notorious anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said she was “deeply disappointed” in Trump’s refusal to endorse a federal ban and that allowing the states to divide “cedes the national debate to the Democrats who are working relentlessly to enact legislation mandating abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy.” Mandating! All nine months! These people, and their batshit propaganda, man. Whew! Regardless, most anti-abortion groups (including SBA Pro-Life America) are still rallying around their guy despite Monday’s development, because they know he’s the one who delivered the Dobbs decision for them in the first place. 

• Abortion isn’t one of Trump’s strong suits, so he’s made sure to focus throughout the campaign on his favorite topic: immigration. Speaking at a multimillion-dollar fundraiser on Saturday night, he re-upped his old “shithole countries” talking point and complained that more people are not immigrating to the United States from “nice” countries like Denmark, Switzerland, and Norway. Wow, subtle! By “nice” he clearly means “overwhelmingly White.”

Meanwhile, at the RNC…

• Over at the Republican National Committee, Trump’s newly-installed leadership team has faced a rocky first month. New chair Michael Whatley and co-chair Laura Trump—a close Trump ally and his literal daughter-in-law, respectively—have faced major staffing problems and operational obstacles in this pivotal election season, causing the Trump campaign to privately criticize the new leaders (again, the ones they installed) in recent weeks. 

• Just days after Whatley and Lara Trump took the helm, emails went out to entire RNC teams, according to the Guardian, informing staffers that they had to choose between resigning and reapplying for their jobs, or face termination: a not-so-subtle MAGA loyalty test. As a result, they lost a large pool of existing talent with institutional knowledge for basically no reason. In spite of all this, Trump hauled his best fundraising month of this campaign season in March, pulling in $65.6 million. Because the Trump campaign has a joint fundraising agreement with the RNC, the duo can accept donations as large as $814,600.