Is It Possible To Write About The Trump Era Without Using The Word "Transactional?"

When Will Trump Promise Free "Post-Birth" Abortions In The White House Clinic?

Yesterday, Andrew Egger noted that pro-lifers are beginning to notice that they’re not steering the SS Trumpanzee any longer as the transactional sociopath tacking “toward the center on abortion,” claiming “he would not try to restrict access to abortion pills if reelected, pledging to veto any new abortion restrictions Congress might pass, and posting over the weekend that ‘My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.’”

How far will Trump push his abortion-agnostic messaging? Yesterday, The Bulwark asked Trump’s campaign whether, if he were elected president and a Congress run by Democrats (not entirely inconceivable!) were to pass a bill restoring Roe v. Wade, he would veto it. The campaign didn’t even offer an explicit answer.

…Obviously, it’s hard to imagine Trump— whose fans used to style him “the most pro-life president in history”— champing at the bit to expand abortion access at the federal level if he retakes power. But his campaign’s studied determination not to give pro-lifers in his coalition even this crumb of explicit reassurance is a remarkable bit of political cynicism— or strategery, depending on one’s vantage point.

Either way, anti-abortion activists aren’t exactly thrilled.

But they haven’t been rushing to battle stations en masse, either.

…Among pro-life activists, by far the most critical of Trump’s pivot has been Lila Rose, president of the group Live Action. “If you don’t stand for pro-life principles, you don’t get pro-life votes,” Rose wrote yesterday. “Due to their increasingly pro-abortion position, Trump/Vance is stretching the lesser of two evils voting strategy to an untenable position. Without some indication that they will work to make our nation a safer place for preborn children, they are making it impossible for pro-life voters to support them.”

But Rose’s threat sparked a backlash online from a host of pro-Trump accounts. One tweet stating that “As a pro-life Catholic, I need to say that Lila Rose is the worst type of human being you’ll ever encounter” racked up thousands of likes. MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair accused Rose and Live Action of scamming pro-lifers out of their money and fumed that “there is nothing more evil than calling for voter suppression in the most consequential election in US history.”

It doesn’t matter what Trump says from moment to moment. One thing that is consistent for Señor T, is that abortion has always been a means to an end, a tool to manipulate his base and secure electoral victories rather than a deeply held— even shallowly held— conviction. His shifting stance on abortion is a perfect example of his transactional approach to politics— adopting the most politically expedient position at any given time, with no regard for consistency or principle. When it was advantageous to court the evangelical vote, he positioned himself as “the most pro-life president in history.” Now, sensing a broader electorate wary of extreme anti-abortion measures, he’s trying to move towards a more mainstream position, offering vague promises that he will protect “women and their reproductive rights.”

This isn’t a sign of genuine evolution on the issue; it’s a strategic calculation. Trump’s refusal to give pro-lifers the explicit reassurances they crave, even as he courts their votes, underscores his view of them as just another interest group to be managed and manipulated. The transactional nature of his approach means that his public positions are always fluid, driven by immediate needs rather than long-term commitments. His supporters— generally easily manipulated idiots to begin with— should be careful of trusting him. He always treats policies as negotiable commodities. He has shown that he supports or opposes legislation based on what he can gain from it politically— of financially— whether it's from Congress, foreign governments, or his base.

Yesterday, Tom Nichols brought up the conservatives who sold their souls for Señor Trumpanzee, starting in 2015 when “the GOP establishment reacted mostly with horror” that he had decided to run for president as a Republican. The party establishment “claimed to be appalled by Trump’s character— as decent people should be— and rejected him as a self-centered carpetbagger who would only get in the way of defeating Hillary Clinton. [Rich] Lowry’s National Review even asked some two dozen well-known conservative figures to spend an entire issue making the case against Trump. The reality, however, is that much of the conservative opposition to Trump in 2016 was a sham— because it came from people who thought they were safe in assuming that Trump couldn’t possibly win. For many on the right, slagging Trump was easy and useful. They could assert their principled conservatism and their political wisdom as they tut-tutted Trump’s inevitable loss. Then they could strip the bark off of a President Hillary Clinton while deflecting charges of partisan motivation: After all, their opposition to Trump— their own candidate!— proved their bona fides as ideologically honest brokers. It was a win-win proposition— as long as Trump lost and then went away.”

But Trump won, and arrangements, so to speak, had to be made. The Republican base— and many of its heaviest donors— had spoken. Some of the conservatives who rejected Trump stayed the course and became the Never Trump Movement. Others, apparently, decided that never didn’t mean “never.” Power is power [— just look at the evangelical leaders he’s selling out right now!—] and if getting the right judges and cutting the right taxes has to include stomping on the rule of law and endangering American national security, well, that’s a price that the stoic right-wingers of the greater Washington, D.C., and New York City metropolitan areas were willing to pay.

Lowry and others in that group never became full-fledged MAGA warriors. Many of them hated Trump, as Tucker Carlson, now a born-again Trump booster, admitted in 2021; they just hated Democrats more. But they also hated being reminded of the spirit-crushing bargain they’d made with a tacky outer-borough real-estate developer they wouldn’t have spoken with a year earlier. As Charlie Sykes wrote in 2017, they adopted a new fetish: “Loathing those who loathe the president. Rabid anti-anti-Trumpism.” 

None of this internecine conservative sniping would matter, except that the anti-anti-Trumpers, in order to justify the abandonment of their principles, are driven to poison the well of public debate for everyone else. They never expected having to deal with Trump for this long; they never foresaw themselves doubling and tripling and quadrupling down to the point where they now must politely look away from felonies, attacks on America’s alliances, and promises to pardon insurrectionists. Lowry and others are intelligent people who know better, but their decision to bend the knee to Trump— even if only with a very small curtsy— requires them to take to the pages of America’s national newspapers and say that Trump might be terrible but Democrats are worse.

For example, a colleague of Lowry’s at National Review, Dan McLaughlin, has for years argued that he could never vote for Trump but that he could not vote for Clinton, Biden, or Harris, either. Harris’s sudden upending of the race might change that. McLaughlin posted yesterday on Twitter that “Harris isn’t just as bad as can be on nearly every policy issue— even profound life-and-death questions of conscience— she’s a menace to the survival of the constitutional order.”

This is a panicky and massive case of projection. McLaughlin might hate Harris’s views on abortion (among other things), but Trump is a demonstrated “menace to the survival of the constitutional order,” and McLaughlin surely knows it.

The anti-anti-Trumpers must now define Harris— and all Democrats— as evil beyond words. Otherwise, how would they explain the ghastly compromises they’ve made? How would they argue against voting to stop Trump? When other conservatives, such as noted retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig, are enthusiastically endorsing Harris, some pretty fancy dancing is required to explain why your principles are more consistent than theirs. Unfortunately, when Trump is out there raising the bar on idiocy, cruelty, and anti-Americanism every day, that dancing looks more like Raygun than Fred Astaire.

For the MAGA media soldiers— the prime-time lineup on Fox News, the talk-radio hosts, the podcasters, and others— wacky (and hideous) accusations against Harris and other Democrats about “Marxism” and “communism” and “after-birth abortions” come easily because they are aimed at people who are already addled by a steady diet of rage and weirdness. But the conservative intellectuals who once opposed Trump have been reduced to dressing up such bizarre arguments as reasonable criticisms. They often seem to be sighing heavily and regretting having to be on the same side as Trump— but that doesn’t stop them from making the risible claim that Trump and Harris are equally terrifying possibilities.

Stepping outside of years of partisan tribal affiliations comes with professional and social costs (and for politicians, electoral consequences). But principles are sometimes burdensome things; that’s part of what makes them principles. The behavior of the anti-anti-Trumpers continues to be an inexcusable betrayal of the values they once claimed to hold. Many of them spoke, even passionately, against Trump— and then they shuffled into line. And for what? One more federal judge? A few billion more dollars in the account of a donor?

It’s one thing to sell your soul cheaply. It’s another to keep taking out second and third mortgages on it until all that’s left is debt and shame.