Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough blasted pro-life Evangelical Christian voters for their “cynical deal” with “pro-choice” candidate, former President Donald Trump, who “transparently shifted to be pro-life, to get their vote.”
Trump has taken varying positions on abortion over the years, and his stance remains a complex issue. Despite crediting himself for the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Trump believes future abortion laws should be left to individual states. His home state of Florida now bans abortion after six weeks, but this fall, voters will decide whether to extend access up to 24 weeks.
In recent weeks Trump initially criticized the six-week ban as “too short” but later said he would vote “no” on expanding access. His shifting views have raised concerns among religious conservatives, risking their support.
Discussing Trump’s “shifting” on abortion policy in recent months with New York Times columnist David French on Wednesday, Scarborough recalled how he “mocked” the idea from the “very beginning” that evangelicals embraced, adding that he was a “conservative”:
You now have women under 45 saying the most important issue is not the economy anymore, it’s abortion. You have Donald Trump flip-flopping, now saying he’s going to be a champion of women’s reproductive rights. You have him saying that he will vote against the six-week bill in Florida, the six-week ban in Florida. He, of course, keeps shifting, he keeps going back and forth.
You have the Texas race, according to a University of Houston poll in the senate, getting very close in part because of abortion. Ted Cruz leading Colin Allred . Talk about the shifting landscape and what challenges it poses, especially for Donald Trump who, again, we’ve talked about evangelicals falling in line. And their bargain, their cynical bargain, their bargain that I mocked from the very beginning.Like supporting a pro-choice candidate, who transparently shifted to be pro-life, to get their vote. You know, then it gave them a license to do whatever they wanted to do. Now we’re seeing once again that that cynical deal evangelicals made with Donald Trump seems to be going up in smoke.
French, also a conservative agreed, blasting Trump as the “worst possible standard-bearer” of the pro-life cause:
I’ll tell you what happened: there are a lot of pro-life folks who justified supporting Trump, because they said he has the strength and tenacity to pursue pro-life goals. The others, and now Republicans have ended up with the most watered down pro-life plank. It’s more functionally pro-choice, than any time in decades, in decades and Trump himself flip-flopping all over the place, first saying that the Florida six-week ban is too strict, then flopping back at that after a lot of online outrage. It’s an absolute mess.I would say if you talk to a smart,
reasonable pro-life activist, they would not have foreseen the total public backlash that has been ongoing since Dobbs. The pro-life movement hasn’t fully reacted to that and Donald Trump is the worst possible standard-bearer.
Scarborough added: “Trump Republicans are not conservatives.”
Watch above on MSNBC.