Donald Trump’s high-profile flip-flops on abortion have riled pro-life supporters yet without a political cost for the former president and his campaign, Robert P. Jones said during “The Convocation Unscripted” webinar.
“That would have been unthinkable in any other era, any other politician in the last nearly half century. And yet he’s pulled it off. I think it has ripped the cover off the GOP’s maybe worst-kept secret, that it’s never really been primarily about abortion,” said Jones, president of Public Religion Research Institute and author of The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future.
Jones joined fellow religion, culture and politics experts Diana Butler Bass, Jemar Tisby and Kristin Kobes Du Mez for the recent discussion connected to “The Convocation” Substack they produce weekly.
Trump shocked and angered Republicans this summer by declaring his intention to vote “yes” in November on an amendment enshrining abortion rights in Florida’s constitution. The state currently bans the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy, which the Republican candidate criticized as being far too short. “I am going to be voting that — we need more than six weeks,” NBC News reported.
Trump, who once took credit for killing Roe v. Wade through his U.S. Supreme Court appointments, went even further in an interview by promising in-vitro fertilization will be protected and even paid for if he wins the general election. “We are going to be, under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for that treatment. We’re going to be mandating that the insurance company pay.”
Robert P. Jones, Diana Butler Bass, Jemar Tisby, Kristin Du Mez
Jones said the reaction to Trump’s about-face on abortion was immediate and fierce from the right and “24 hours later, his campaign walked it back and said, ‘Oh no, Mr. Trump will be voting against the expansion of abortion rights in Florida.’ But he still said, ‘I think six weeks is too short and by the way remember I’m the wone who got rid of Roe v. Wade.”
Trump’s equivocating has “scrambled the Republican Party” on abortion, leading it to abandon its previous support for a complete national ban in favor of Trump’s preference for leaving the matter to the states, Jones added. “This time around, they did this very truncated, bizarre, badly punctuated platform that looks like cut-and-paste from Trump’s tweets.”
Tisby, a history professor at Simmons College of Kentucky and author of The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race and Resistance, asked Jones if conservative supporters are likely to turn on Trump due to his shifting stances on abortion. “Wasn’t there a little bit? I saw a bit of chatter on social media.”
Not really, Jones replied. “The elite class has to bark about it, and particularly the people running the anti-abortion activist groups have to bark about it. But I would bet whatever you want to put on the table that we wouldn’t see any significant movement in the polls among white evangelicals — the rank and file — at all. Not a blip over this. It’s remarkable.”
“I’m not putting a dime on that one,” Tisby said.
Also remarkable is how Trump’s flip-flops on abortion are not alienating pro-life evangelicals vehemently opposed to abortion even to protect the health of the mother or in cases of incest and rape, said Du Mez, professor of gender, religion and politics at Calvin University in Michigan and author of the bestselling book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.
“It’s just fascinating now to hear, when it’s politically expedient, some of these voices justify their support for Donald Trump and for, all of a sudden, a nuanced position because it’s politically expedient,” she said. “Honestly, I just can’t overstate how dramatic that rhetorical shift is.”
Jones said the situation reinforces that his observation that white Christian supremacy is the glue keeping Trump’s candidacy together.
“Clearly, it’s not (abortion), so I am just back to this vision of a white Christian country. That’s the thing really holding them together — restoring power to white Christians. He’s saying that explicitly on the trail, especially when he is in front of white evangelical audiences. He is saying, ‘We are going to bring it back, you will have power you’ve never had before, we are going to bring our religion back.’”
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