Hillary Clinton Blasts Trump for Trying to Run as Abortion ‘Moderate’

Hillary Clinton blasted Donald Trump’s desire to run as a “moderate” on abortion in 2024 despite his instrumental role in securing the destruction of federal abortion rights in the United States.

Earlier this week, Rolling Stone spoke to sources close to the former president, who has been conveying to advisers that he believes he can win the general election by softening his stance on abortion — despite appointing three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade and earlier this year publicly bragging that he was the one who “was able to kill” federal protections.

Clinton, Trump’s 2016 rival for the presidency, was not convinced of his strategy, to say the least. “He thinks women are going to fall for this?” she wrote Wednesday on X, formerly Twitter, citing Rolling Stone’s reporting.

For months now, Trump has been at odds with anti-abortion groups and hardline anti-abortion lawmakers over what he views as a disastrous political fallout in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s destruction of Roe. Having accomplished their goal of eliminating federal guarantees of reproductive rights, anti-abortion groups are now pushing Republican lawmakers to continue implementing restrictions on abortion, and back a 15-week federal ban. Lawmakers are largely obliging them, but, as previously reported by Rolling Stone, Trump has privately expressed concerns that as a result the GOP is “getting killed on abortion.”

Trump has long been trying to reconcile his impulse to claim credit for the end of Roe with the reality that anger over the GOP’s incursions against reproductive rights has been a major contributor to the party’s abysmal electoral performances since 2020, and Clinton isn’t the only one who is dubious that he’ll be able to convince voters with this new “moderate” plan.

Reproductive Freedom for All, formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America, wrote in a Monday statement in response to Rolling Stone’s reporting: “From cementing the anti-abortion Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe v. Wade to decimating the Title X program to reviving the global gag rule, Donald Trump is a flagrant, anti-abortion extremist. Any claims to the contrary are at best naive and at worst a big, fat lie. If he wins the presidency in 2024, he will work to enact a national abortion ban.”

EMILYs List, a political organization supporting pro-choice candidates, wrote on X that “since the beginning, Trump has been abundantly clear about his plan to pass a federal abortion ban and punish people who seek abortions. His ‘rebrand’ won’t fool us: we see him for the extremist that he is.”

As The Daily Show’s guest host Michelle Wolf described it, Trump acting like he cares about abortion rights “is like the Kool-Aid man suddenly caring about walls.”

“It’s too late dude, the damage is done,” she added.

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