One endearing thing about undead tangerine and presidential candidate Donald Trump is what a bad liar he is. Take his insistence that he’s now super anti-abortion, after years of being pro-choice: it just sounds like bullshit. Trump took to Facebook Tuesday night to insist again that he hates abortion and loves babies, and also, in the process, to mistakenly state that the 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade is “approaching.” It happened last month.
We’re not arguing here that Trump is some sort of, uh, champion for women’s rights; more like his stories about turning anti-abortion just sound silly, stiff, and like he’s pulling them from the same orifice where he gets his policy proposals.
Trump described himself in 1999 as “very pro-choice;” his story about his come-to-Jesus moment sounds just exceedingly fake, premised on the pregnancy experience of a person who definitely doesn’t exist. Here’s the version of it he told the Christian Broadcasting Network in January:
One thing about me, I’m a very honorable guy. I’m pro-life, but I changed my view a number of years ago. One of the reasons I changed — one of the primary reasons — a friend of mine’s wife was pregnant, in this case married.
She was pregnant and he didn’t really want the baby. And he was telling me the story. He was crying as he was telling me the story. He ends up having the baby and the baby is the apple of his eye. It’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to him.
And you know here’s a baby that wasn’t going to be let into life. And I heard this, and some other stories, and I am pro-life.
Congrats to that imaginary man and his fully not-real infant. Trump also felt the need, for some reason, to pen this lengthy Facebook note about how important pro-liferism is to him. It begins:
Let me be clear—I am pro-life. I support that position with exceptions allowed for rape, incest or the life of the mother being at risk. I did not always hold this position, but I had a significant personal experience that brought the precious gift of life into perspective for me. My story is well documented, so I will not retell it here. However, what I will do with the remaining space is express my feelings about life, and the culture of life, as we approach the 43nd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade.
The anniversary was January 22. Trump celebrated it by re-tweeting a person with “White Genocide” in their handle:
Beautiful. Just perfect.
Trump goes on to argue that he’ll be the best pro-life president, because he builds things, like, we guess, titanium uterine walls or cages to keep intransigent women in. Who knows. He also accuses the Supreme Court of having “utter contempt for federalism and the 10th Amendment,” which makes zero sense and is not how the laws of this country work:
If using taxpayer money to facilitate our slide to a culture of death was not enough, the 1973 decision became a landmark decision demonstrating the utter contempt the court had for federalism and the 10th Amendment. Roe v. Wade gave the court an excuse to dismantle the decisions of state legislatures and the votes of the people. This is a pattern that the court has repeated over and over again since that decision. Perhaps Roe v. Wade became yet another incidence of disconnect between the people and their government.
We are in the middle of a presidential political cycle and votes will be cast in just days. The citizens of this nation will have the chance to vote for candidates that are aligned with their individual worldviews. It is my hope that they will choose the builder, the man who has the ability to imagine the greatness of this nation. The next President must follow those principles that work best and that reinforce the reverence Americans hold for life. A culture of life is too important to let slip away for convenience or political correctness. It is by preserving our culture of life that we will Make America Great Again.
Just heap this one on the pile, I guess.
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