I asked Trump's campaign to prove that Democrats support infanticide. They couldn't.

Former President Donald Trump has a problem. An incendiary lie is typically his first solution to any dilemma.

His messaging on abortion shows us that.

Trump likes to brag about appointing the three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn the constitutional protections for abortion in June 2022. But he knows from that year's midterm elections that the abortion ruling motivated angry voters eager to punish Republicans for it.

With the Republican National Convention starting this week in Milwaukee, Trump now insists abortion should be regulated by the states while denying accusations by Democrats that a second term for him would result in a national ban on abortion.

And there is Trump's problem: So many of his right-wing supporters demand a national ban on abortion and hate hearing Trump try to distance himself from it.

Trump's unhinged solution is to claim that President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party advocate for abortion available, "even after birth."

That's not true. But Trump's most loyal supporters have shown us they don't care about truth if you feed them incendiary lies they want to swallow. And this Trump lie, which he has trotted out repeatedly since 2016, plays well with them and maybe takes the heat off him with the right-wingers.

Trump's campaign couldn't answer why they're lying about abortion

Trump went back to that lie during the debate last month, saying this about Democrats while standing on stage with Biden: "The problem they have is they're radical, because they will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth."

Biden, who looked lost for much of the debate, responded by criticizing Trump for helping to undo protections for abortion but said nothing to counter his fiction about Democrats supporting infanticide. It was a softball deception Trump slow-pitched to Biden, who couldn't even muster a swing at it.

I asked Trump's campaign last week for proof of his claim that Democrats support killing newborns. I requested specific examples of states where abortions are allowed, "even after birth," and any specific examples of such abortions being performed.

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Karoline Leavitt, Trump's national press secretary, responded with zero examples and just simply repeated his claim from the debate while offering a list of instances when Biden and other Democrats supported abortion rights.

The Biden campaign, when I asked for his position on the issue, sent me five examples of media reports from 2020, 2022 and 2024, including a CNN fact-check article from last month, that easily debunk Trump's claim.

Trump doesn't let facts get in the way of a good campaign lie

Trump knows that repeating this kind of lie cements it into the foundation of his supporters and then can spread to undecided voters who don't know they're being told a lie.

Katie Rodihan, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood, called Trump's claim "pure propaganda."

"What Trump is describing is infanticide, which is already illegal, and it is dangerous and insulting to say otherwise," Rodihan told me. "No abortions take place after birth."

Third-trimester abortions, Rodihan added, are "often a result of catastrophic medical diagnoses."

In such cases, the fetus has a severe medical condition and is unlikely to survive, or the life of the pregnant woman is endangered by the pregnancy. The notion that someone who has been pregnant for nine months and then just decides to call it quits at the last moment is absurd.

Amy Friedrich-Karnik, director of federal policy at the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that supports abortion rights, noted that less than 1% of abortions happen at 21 weeks or later.

"These types of inflammatory claims have no basis in evidence, facts or medical standards of care," Friedrich-Karnik said. "Misrepresenting and stigmatizing abortion care later in pregnancy only serves to increase the risks to patients and providers."

About the Ten Commandments in schools: Louisiana law isn't about Ten Commandments. It's Christian nationalist bait for Supreme Court.

The new Republican platform is more of Trump's campaign messages

Trump's problem with right-wingers expanded last Monday when the Republican National Committee endorsed a slimmed-down convention platform chock full of standard lines from a Trump campaign rally.

That GOP platform says, "We will oppose Late Term Abortion," while noting that states are "free" to pass laws to regulate the procedure.

The 16-page document, slashed from 66 pages in 2016 and 2020, eliminates the call in those previous platforms for a national abortion ban. But the new platform also says the Republican Party believes "that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process."

That is the headline on the narrative the hard right has always made about abortion, equating a fetus in the very early stages of development to a person walking around at the party's convention today.

Here, again, Trump is trying to mollify his base about a topic they feel passionate about that he sees as a threat to his bid for a second term.

The truth about Trump is he only believes in what he has to, in the moment he's in

Trump, at his core, is a shameless salesman who has always regarded himself as his most marketable product. He has no ideological core. No policy means more to him than winning an election.

That's why his claims about letting the states decide whether to allow abortion are meaningless. Trump exists only in the now, with little worry for the future or accountability for what he has said in the past.

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In the now, a Gallup survey released last month showed that half of voters think abortion should be legal under certain circumstances, while 35% think it should be legal under any circumstance and 12% want it to be illegal at all times. No wonder Trump is running scared.

Picture this: Trump wins in November and takes office in January. And the Republicans take control of the House and Senate – which in the past month has become a far likely outcome for 2025 as Biden craters and Democrats bicker about the fate of the party.

Say the Republicans pass legislation to ban abortion nationwide. Do you think Trump signs that into law or holds fast to a promise he made while seeking office?

Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump tells the same abortion lie because he'll lose on the truth