1. This is how I’m dealing with it. I refuse to disengage from the political sphere.
2. As citizens we have the responsibility to hold our leaders accountable, no matter which party they represent.
3. Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them.
Stahl: “Are you looking to appoint a justice who wants to overturn Roe v. Wade?”
There’s some backing and forthing here, as Trump gets off track by bringing in guns and the Second Amendment but then veers back to abortion. He’s pro-life, he says, and he would appoint pro-life judges. Then he says, “If [Roe v. Wade] ever were overturned it would go back to the states.”
Stahl: “Then some woman won’t be able to get an abortion?”
Trump: “No, it would go back to the states.”
Stahl: “But some states . . . “ (It’s hard to hear exactly what she says as Trump talks over her, but her meaning is clear.)
Trump: “Yeah, well, they’ll perhaps have to go, they’ll have to go to another state.” (accompanied with sort of shrug, eyeroll)
Stahl: “And that’s okay?”
Trump: “Well, we’ll see what happens. It’s got a long way to go, just so you understand.”
So here I sit, two and a half weeks after this interview, googling such terms as “Trump 60 Minutes interview abortion,” and I’m not finding any pro-life outrage out there. There are plenty of articles about the interview itself, and RedState did publish an article titled “Six Takeaways from the Trump 60 Minutes Interview,” but no one seems to be saying, “Hey, what gives? We voted for this guy, stuck our fingers in our ears and hummed loudly to keep out what he’s really like, all because he said he was pro-life and he said he’d appoint pro-life judges. So now he’s saying, ‘Well, yes, I’ll appoint those judges, but (in essence) I’m not really all that interested in ending abortions. Women can still get ‘em. They may just have to travel across a state line to do it. C’est la vie!’”
And why, by the way, does he say in this very same interview that the issue of gay marriage is “irrelevant because it was already settled”? He added, “It’s law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean it’s done.” Why then wouldn’t that the case for abortion, given his reasoning?
Here this man was, less than a week after the most gobsmacking black-swan event in the history of US elections, being given a pretty softball interview on one of the biggest TV news platforms in the country, when his popularity will never be higher, and what does he do? Give a ringing endorsement for the sanctity of human life? Even a sentence or two? Something for all those pro-lifers who held their noses and voted for him (and, even more lamentably, those who went whole-hog on the Trump bandwagon) because he said . . .
Um, not so much.
I had written back before the election that the SCOTUS issue was not being looked at logically. If you missed that piercing piece of analysis then, I’d encourage you to read it now. And in looking around for material to use in this article I ran across something I missed from National Review’s Ian Tuttle written back in August that also rips apart the whole argument of “I have to vote for Trump because of the Supreme Court.” His arguments are a lot better than mine. It’s a very thoughtful and challenging piece; I’ve had to read it a couple of times to really understand all of his historical analysis.
Neither one of these pre-election articles swayed a single vote, I am sure. But now, folks, in the cold light of post-election day, maybe a little heart-searching is in order. Do you think that it might be a good idea from now on to do some thinking for ourselves?
“The Supreme Court Is Not a Sufficient Reason to Vote for Donald Trump”