The generally accepted — and oft-repeated — narrative about Trump is that he is a cult-leader who can bend the Republican base to his will. On issues like free trade and foreign policy, he broke with long-standing Republican orthodoxy and faced no repercussions. He attacked Republican stalwarts like the Bush family and John McCain. Not only was there no blowback, Trump also made these folks' personas non-grata in the Republican Party. Whether it’s indictments, his sexual assaults, or his dalliances and dinner dates with Nazis, Trump could force the Republican Party to go along.

The GOP is Trump’s party and what he says goes. Trump is a man accountable to no one. This has benefited him politically and brought in folks who hate politics and distrust institutions.

But that image became fuzzy last week when Donald Trump bent to the will of anti-abortion extremists in a stunning flip-flop on abortion that tells us everything we need to know about Donald Trump. He poses an existential threat to reproductive freedom for tens of millions of Americans.

The Flip-Flop to End All Flip-Flops

I have written about Trump’s abortion flip-flop a couple of times in the last week, so if you are a regular reader of Message Box, please feel free to skip ahead. If not…

In an interview with Dasha Burns of NBC News, Trump implied that he would vote for the amendment on the Florida ballot guaranteeing access to abortion and effectively overturning the state’s six-week ban. Trump is now a Florida resident and many are unsure how he plans to vote on the amendment. Trump’s stated position on abortion is that it's up to the states. For crass political reasons he has been critical of Florida’s extreme ban. A day ago, Trump flip-flopped, telling Fox News that he would vote NO on the amendment.

So what happened in the subsequent twenty-four hours?

Well, the evangelical community and anti-abortion activists went ballistic. They blew up the phone lines to Mar-a-Lago or wherever Trump  was laying his head last week. They argued that Trump’s new stance would depress turnout from his base.

Ever since Dobbs, Trump cannot get it right. He watched his slate of hand-picked candidates get mowed down in 2022 and he sees the polls showing large majorities oppose the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the sorts of state and national abortion bans of which Republicans have long dreamed. Trump thought his “leave it to the states” policy would help. It didn’t.

Floating the idea of voting for the abortion amendment was another desperate effort to get on the right side of the issue that has cost Republicans nearly every election. This time, Trump crossed a line. The anti-abortion faction of the party told him to reverse course and he did so immediately.

One of the core tenets of Trump’s political philosophy is to never, under any circumstances admit to wrongdoing. Heck, Trump doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down on defending and dining with Nazis. So the fact that Trump changed course so quickly and with so little resistance on abortion is quite notable.

Why It Matters

Based on Trump’s record, the contents of Project 2025, and the Republican Party’s decades-long effort to control women’s bodies, Democrats argue that a Trump victory poses an existential threat to reproductive freedom. There are two main ways that, if elected, Trump could further restrict access to abortion.

First, a Republican Congress could pass a federal abortion ban. If this happens, abortion would be banned everywhere in America — no matter your state or governor. 

Second, as delineated in Project 2025, the Trump Administration is likely to try to ban mifepristone, the abortion pill, and use obscure laws to prevent it from being mailed across state lines.

Trump and the GOP tried to push back on these arguments. Republicans argued that a national abortion ban would never pass Congress; then Trump claimed he would veto such a bill if it came to his desk. During the debate with Biden in June, Trump claimed he wouldn’t ban mifepristone.

Any sane person who has been following politics over the last few years would be inherently skeptical of anything Trump promises. In 2016, he promised to protect Social Security and Medicare and then proposed cuts to the federal budget every year he was in the White House.

But even if you give Trump the benefit of the doubt (and there are a lot more of those folks than Democrats assume), the events of last week should give you great pause. For purely crass political purposes, Trump wanted to appear more moderate on abortion. The anti-abortion extremists in the party told him no and he immediately buckled.

These folks will be calling the shots in a Trump Administration. They will influence policy and staffing decisions and that should scare the shit out of anyone who cares about reproductive freedom. Dobbs was the beginning — not the end — of the Far Right’s efforts.

This new ad from the Harris-Walz campaign makes the case well.

Please share it with your friends and family who may not yet be sufficiently worried about how Trump could ban abortion nationwide.