MIKE JOHNSON, J.D. VANCE: WE WON'T BAN ABORTION IN A SECOND TRUMP TERM BECAUSE WE HAVEN'T BRAINWASHED ENOUGH OF YOU YET

I might be making an obvious point, but I want you to notice what House Speaker Mike Johnson tells Kristen Welker of Meet the Press when she asks him whether he'll pursue an abortion ban if there's a second Trump term:

Okay, before you can have political consensus on a divisive issue, you have to have cultural consensus. Remember, politics is downstream from culture. We don't have that right now. There's a lot of difference of opinion out there in the states, and we've got to work through all that.... I believe that that's an important issue. But I've got to build a [culture of] life – I have to build a cultural consensus. We're nowhere near that in this country. We know that. So there's a lot of work to do.

He says this at 2:05 in this video:

Kristen Welker repeatedly grills Mike Johnson about if he will pledge to not hold a vote on legislation that would ban abortion if he's Speaker again. Johnson dodges but makes clear he will not make that pledge. pic.twitter.com/cCRyhxvsnp

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 13, 2024

And then we have J.D. Vance speaking to The New York Times about abortion:

In 2023, we had a big referendum in the state of Ohio. I campaigned on one side; the people of Ohio ... voted 60-40 to go in the other direction. And to implement, I think, a much more liberal abortion regime than certainly the people on the other side were campaigning for. Well, what do you take from that? You can take the lesson that we just didn’t campaign hard enough, we didn’t make the case hard enough. I don’t think that’s right. I think the proper thing to take from that is we have lost the trust of the American people. When we went out there and campaigned for our position, they instinctively mistrusted us, and we need to get trust back.

You know what Johnson means when he says it's necessary to "build a culture of life," and what Vance means when he says that would-be abortion banners "have lost the trust of the American people" and "need to get trust back," don't you?

It means they believe they can -- and are certain they should -- manipulate our minds until we agree with them that abortion should be banned, or at least they need to manipulate enough of us to ensure that they'll survive tough elections if they pass an abortion ban.

They know how to manipulate public opinion. They've driven America very far to the right on immigration in recent years. Twenty years ago, they bamboozled us into believing that Saddam Hussein was an existential threat to America, even though he had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

The difference is that we don't need their "expert" opinions on unwanted pregnancy, because most of us know what the fear of an unwanted pregnancy feels like, either through personal experience or the experience of people we're close to. We don't need to watch a Sunday talk show to tell us how to feel about this issue.

I'm worried about a possible Republican sweep this year, or maybe in a future presidential year. I worry that they'll try to finish what they started with the Dobbs decision.

So it's a small comfort that they might think they can't pull this off right now. I say "small comfort" because they might try to go after abortion using executive action (proclaiming that the Comstock Act criminalizes the distribution of abortion pills, for instance), or via federal courts that will become even more right-wing if Trump wins. But maybe -- maybe -- there won't be a bill in Congress, because they fear they haven't managed to brainwash us yet.