Donald Trump is not the most on-message guy. He doesn’t have a lot of message discipline, and never really has. He’s never met a question he didn’t want to answer, and he has at times contradicted himself in an effort to just give his thoughts on whatever the current topic is.
On one hand, it’s nice to see a politician who isn’t afraid of questions. On the other, it can be frustrating when the answers he gives serve no purpose and potentially end up hurting him.
The most recent example of this is his commentary on women and reproductive rights.
“My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” he said in a post on Truth Social this past Friday. Several pro-life groups are concerned by the “euphemistic language” of the phrase “reproductive rights,” which is the language adopted by the Left to discuss abortion and abortive healthcare.
The Trump campaign came out and clarified his comments later.
“As President Trump has consistently stated, he supports the rights of individuals in their respective states to determine their laws on abortion,” said Karoline Leavitt, the campaign’s national press secretary. “President Trump also strongly supports ensuring women have access to the care they need to create healthy families, including widespread access to IVF, birth control, and contraception, and he always will.”
Trump’s comments come at the end of a very long week of the Democratic National Convention attacking him and the Republican Party over the nixing of Roe v. Wade. The party was so adamant about protecting the “right” to kill the unborn that they had groups offering abortions right outside the door at the convention.
READ MORE: Planned Parenthood Offering Free Vasectomies, Medication Abortions Near DNC
Now, the evangelical and pro-life right will most decidedly not go out and vote for Kamala Harris because Trump has made them angry over this. In fact, there is a very good chance they will stay with Trump because giving Harris any chance to win means their key issue will get reversed by the Democrats.
But there will be some voters who are so exasperated that they stay home, and 2024 is a year where both sides need to get out as many votes as they can.
This doesn’t help Trump, considering all the pro-abortion folks are already on Team Harris. What it does, however, is distract Trump and the Trump campaign from sticking to the two major talking points that consistently show up as the most important issues for voters: the economy and immigration.
Every line of every speech that doesn’t focus on these two points, every social media post that talks about something or someone else, and every statement that is made regarding any other topic is time and effort not spent hammering home these two issues. The DNC was a week of the Democrats pretending they weren’t the incumbent party and saying how they’ll do so much better for all Americans this time. They declared that we “can’t go back” to the Trump era.
But Americans want to go back to the economy of the pre-COVID Trump era. They want to go back to a more secure border, cheaper energy, and more economic growth. But if Trump is busy trying to make himself sound like a great candidate for women who favor “reproductive health,” then it shows he’s paying too much attention to the poll numbers and trying to stop the “bleed” he’s seeing.
The poll numbers will correct themselves if he stays on message regarding the economy and immigration. They will tighten up if he tightens up. He can’t throw out a bunch of talking points against the wall to see what sticks if he wants to win. That sounds more like desperation than a viable campaign strategy.
