However, he clearly hasn't absorbed all aspects of right-wing dogma. In some cases, he deliberately rejects the dogma -- he doesn't like the Bushes, so he's critical of the Iraq War. But in other cases, he just hasn't learned the lingo. Take this exchange from a newly published interview by Maureen Dowd:
... I had to ask: When he was a swinging bachelor in Manhattan, was he ever involved with anyone who had an abortion?The title of Kevin Drum's post in response to that is "It Sure Sounds Like Donald Trump Has Paid for an Abortion or Two in His Life." Drum writes:
“Such an interesting question,” he said. “So what’s your next question?”
I think we can take that as a yes. I wonder what his evangelical fans will think of this?But if the answer really is yes, I think Trump might have been able to acknowledge it without alienating evangelical voters, as long as he'd said he felt horrible about the experience. After all, it's widely believed on the Christian right that abortion leads to mental anguish, not just for women who have the procedure, but for the men they're involved with.
Here's a typical expression of that belief:
ARE YOU THE FATHER OF A BABY WHO WAS ABORTED?And this is from an organization called Fatherhood Forever:
Men everywhere report that having a child aborted is a horrendous and heartbreaking experience, whether they opposed or supported the abortion. Afterwards, many men feel angry, guilty and powerless. Sometimes they become depressed and suicidal.
Many men think they’re going to solve a problem by aborting their child. Later they realize it was a big mistake that they can’t forget.
One man confessed that he had been an alcoholic and had committed various crimes for which he served prison time, but he said the worst thing he had ever done was to encourage his girlfriend to have an abortion....
Help is available right now. Excellent counselors are just a phone call away. They understand the pain, sadness and guilt after abortion and they want to help you begin the healing process.
For More Information, Please Call:
Men’s Abortion Recovery Ministries....
Welcome to the Silent No More Awareness Campaign. An important part of the campaign is our outreach to men who Regret their Lost Fatherhood from an abortion loss....If Trump had acknowledged an ex-girlfriend's abortion and talked like this ("I'm that baby's father forever"), evangelical voters would weep for him.
Our goal, first and foremost, is to reach out to broken and hurting fathers who regret lost fatherhood and are searching for help. Experience has shown that many men who are hurting from the loss of a child to abortion think they are alone in their suffering. They often question their own emotions and wonder if they even have the right to feel pain....
By participating in a healing program, you will come to a deeper understanding of your lost opportunity for fatherhood. You will also discover in recovery that while we have lost opportunities to parent our children in this life, we remain forever fathers of our beloved children lost to abortion.
But maybe that would be a tad unconvincing coming from Donald Trump. In that case, maybe he could have taken more of a "men's rights" approach to the question, expressing anger at the woman's decision to terminate her pregnancy. Perhaps he wouldn't have wanted to express quite as much anger as this "men's rights" graphic does...
So maybe he could have taken a hybrid approach -- religious and possessive -- like this guy:
A New Mexico man said today he will fight to keep up a controversial billboard that suggested his ex-girlfriend had an abortion.A little faux-grief, a little anger at the alleged selfishness of his ex -- something like that would have gone over well with a lot of Republican voters.
The billboard has a photo of Greg Fultz holding the outline of a baby with a playground in the background. The large text beside the photo reads, "This Would Have Been a Picture Of My 2-Month Old Baby If The Mother Had Decided To NOT KILL Our Child!"
... Fultz's ex-girlfriend Nani Lawrence took him to court with a petition for domestic violence and charges of harassment and invasion of privacy.
Fultz, 35, claims that Lawrence was pregnant with his child during their six-month relationship last year. He admits that when the relationship ended, the baby was lost, but he does not know whether it was due to an abortion or a miscarriage. Fultz says that Lawrence would not tell him what happened....
"My original intentions when I started this campaign were quite simple," Fultz said. "I just wanted to shed the light on pro-life issues and fathers' rights. I have had no closure over my own personal loss and that's where the billboard came into play."
4 comments:
Can he admit that even one woman didn't want to give birth to his gilded spawn? Der Drumpfenfuhrer always wins. If he wanted that baby, he could have gotten it. Any woman willing to sleep with Donald Trump has a price at which she would be willing to squeeze his child out of her vagina. I don't think whining about this or that women denying him his children would be convincing either. Or if he made it convincing, it would undermine the rest of the message.
Hays is right. Also, this narrative of sin and repentance? This is the man who explained that he was a Christian and lover of the Bible even more than his own book but couldn't understand the question whether he had ever asked God for forgiveness: ""Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness, if I am not making mistakes?" asked Trump. "I work hard, I'm an honorable person."
I think the next hate group that should endorse tRump should be the MRA's. Its a perfect fit.
I don't think Trump does "faux-anything" very well. That is part of his charm -- maybe most of it. I've come to the same conclusion you expressed in your first paragraph -- Trump is sincere. He's kind of a moron but sincere about his beliefs and pretty transparent. He is fairly likely to tell you the truth -- or, as he did with Dowd, transparently dodge it. He doesn't do artifice. He also, somewhat refreshingly, struggles with the cognitive dissonance endemic to much of conservatism. Consequently, he droped the nonsense about "Bush kept us safe." Kicked it and curb stomped it to the point that I truly think it is dead. Frankly that was amazing to me. It also, I think, explains his response about punishing hussies who abort. Really seems only logical. We punish moms who kill their two-year-olds, why not their fetuses?
It leaves me in a weird place where I continue to be convinced that a Trump nomination is the best of all possible worlds. Especially considering the damage he is doing to his party. But also because, along the way, he is shedding light as well as heat.
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