Donald Trump's been flipping and flopping like a panicked fish these days on the issue of abortion. Trump recently recently made the specious claim on Truth Social that he would be "great for women and their reproductive rights." On Thursday, the Republican candidate caused a commotion amongst conservatives when he seemed to signal disapproval of Florida's abortion ban, claiming "we need more than six weeks" and implying that he plans to vote for an amendment that would repeal the state's new law in November. Even though he was almost certainly lying, Trump swiftly got heat from anti-choice activists. So on Friday, he flipped yet again and affirmed that he plans to vote against the amendment — which means he's voting to keep a near-total abortion ban in place in Florida.
It's impossible to track from minute to minute what Trump is saying about abortion, but the one constant, of course, is that he's lying. We know from Project 2025, which was created to handle Trump's policy agenda in lieu of a traditional transition team, that the goal is to ban abortion nationally, either through an act of Congress or by fiat, with an executive order making it a crime to transport drugs or other materials to be used in an abortion. Trump doesn't want Americans to know this. Abortion bans aren't just wildly unpopular. Polls show anger over abortion bans are motivating voters, especially women. They are now registering to vote at astonishing rates.
But Trump's dodging and weaving around this issue isn't just about women. Abortion bans aren't popular with men either, especially the kind of male voters Trump has been heavily marketing to in recent weeks: bro voters. They are the younger, more secular crowd of men that Trump has been courting by appearing on podcasts ranging from generically dudely ones to those hosted by far-right bigots. Not all younger men are interested in demonizing feminism, of course. But, as journalist Max Read explained in his newsletter, the "d*ps**t outreach strategy" is premised on the idea that "a consistent media campaign among them might increase turnout" with "low-propensity voters."
It's an evil strategy, but one with some logic to it. Trump is a loudmouthed misogynist who was proven in court to have committed sexual assault against journalist E. Jean Carroll. These facts can't be changed, but the Trump campaign believes they can spin Trump's hatred of women as an asset, marketing him to men who resent women's social and economic progress. In this view, Trump is presented as a "fun" misogynist, offering permission to men to be oinking pigs who sexually harass without apology and expect to be indulged at every turn just for their wise choice to be born male. Male voters are led to believe that, in Trump's world, women have to shut up and serve, while men get to do whatever they want without consequences.
The problem for Trump is that "fun" misogyny is hard to square with abortion bans, which stem from a more puritanical sexism, one which seeks to constrain the sexual expression of both men and women. Even the dimmest of dudebros knows that forced childbirth doesn't just trap women. Men can and should be worried about how an unwanted pregnancy can affect their social lives and their pocketbooks. It's a lot harder to be a carefree cad about town when you have child support payments or even, as the religious right hopes, a shotgun marriage. It's likely why the latest Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that 1 in 5 men called abortion a top voting issue for them. In 2019, prior to the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, the same poll found that fewer than 10% of men said abortion was a top priority.
Trump's history of compulsive adultery and even his 34 felony convictions — which stemmed from an illegal "hush money" payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels — help burnish his image as a hedonistic misogynist. But that can only go so far in distracting voters from the fact that he did more than any other person to end the right to legal abortion. Trump may occasionally bristle when people point out that the religious right wholly owns him, but at every turn, he proves how true that accusation is. When he even pretended to be moderate on abortion with his weasel words around the Florida ban, anti-choice activists threw a fit. It wasn't even 24 hours before Trump was back to toeing the hard-right line of standing by a state law that makes almost all safe abortions illegal.
The choice of Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate underscores how impossible it is to strike the balance Trump wants. Vance was clearly picked as a play for the bro vote. He may be awkward in most ways, but Vance channels both the male entitlement and unvarnished loathing of women that defines the angry male voter the Trump campaign wants. The problem is that Vance has a long history of arguing that the government's job is frogmarching young people into marriage and parenthood, the sooner the better. Vance has spoken out against reproductive rights and divorce. And he has advocated for policies that punish people who don't produce biological children. While much of his vitriol against single and/or childless people is aimed at women, most men grasp that you can't have forced motherhood without forcing fatherhood, as well. Vance doesn't help the case by talking about marriage and parenthood more as a duty than a joy.
Trump wants young men to view him as a "playboy" to look up to, though the details of his encounter with Daniels suggest that his sexual prowess is about as real as his orange-hued skin tone. Vance, however, tells the real story of MAGA government's plans for young men: trapping them in hasty marriages alongside the women who are being forced to bear all those children.
For a wealthy man like Trump, being married with lots of kids doesn't interrupt the womanizing. Wives and children can be safely stored out of sight at second homes or penthouse apartments, while the men run off to golf tournaments to commit adultery. For middle-class men, however, marriage and fatherhood mark the end of youth and usher in an era of adult responsibilities. It's not that they never want to get married, but most want to enjoy their youth first. Few fantasize about settling down for life with the first girl they ever get naked with.
The chaos in the polling data shows why Trump is so worried about this. With young women, the polling is stable: most hate Trump and plan to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. But some polls show Trump has strong support with young men, while others show much less enthusiasm for the Republican candidate. I suspect this volatility depends on how Trump's misogyny is playing out in any given week. If Trump is successfully spinning himself as a womanizer who winks at women aborting inconvenient pregnancies, then he can probably keep those young men. If, however, the Vance faction is winning out and young men are reminded that Project 2025 is also a threat to their freedom, they could start peeling away.
Trump's tendency to lie about his radically anti-abortion views could do a lot to keep him in the good graces of the bro voters. But the anti-choice community demands fealty from Trump, both privately in assurances he will ban abortion and publicly in reaffirmation of support for abortion bans. Keeping his dudely base from learning he will force fatherhood upon them is key to Trump winning in November. So it's crucial that Harris pull out every stop to make sure those voters know Trump is happy to throw them to the wolves alongside the women they resent.
