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In a far-ranging and deeply disturbing interview with TIME, former president and current presidential candidate and criminal defendant Donald Trump laid out just some of his terrifying plans for our future, should be become president again.
Spoiler alert, it ends with him suggesting that a lot of Americans actually quite like the idea of a dictator.
Whether or not he was kidding about bringing a tyrannical end to our 248-year experiment in democracy, I ask him, Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles? Trump says no. Quite the opposite, he insists. “I think a lot of people like it.”
I’d like to say he’s wrong, there, but he’s probably not. I suppose if a dictator were doing every terrible thing that someone had dreamed, as Trump clearly plans to do, they’d like that very much.
I cannot possibly address everything in there (and if I get started on his bad crime takes or his assertion that “There is a definite antiwhite feeling in the country,” we will be here all day), so we’re just gonna talk about how very, very bad and terrifying he plans to be, re: abortion.
Trump has tried, rather unsuccessfully, to pivot to being more “moderate” on abortion and “leaving it to the states,” while simultaneously bragging about being responsible for getting Roe overturned — which he now claims was something everyone wanted and thought was really great. (Narrator: It was not.)
Are you comfortable if states decide to punish women who access abortions after the procedure is banned?
Trump: Are you talking about number of weeks?
Yeah. Let’s say there’s a 15-week ban—
Trump: Again, that’s going to be—I don’t have to be comfortable or uncomfortable. The states are going to make that decision. The states are going to have to be comfortable or uncomfortable, not me.
Do you think states should monitor women’s pregnancies so they can know if they’ve gotten an abortion after the ban?
Trump: I think they might do that. Again, you’ll have to speak to the individual states. Look, Roe v. Wade was all about bringing it back to the states. And that was a legal, as well as possibly in the hearts of some, in the minds of some, a moral decision. Every legal scholar, Democrat, Republican, and other wanted that issue back at the states. You know, Roe v. Wade was always considered very bad law. Very bad. It was a very bad issue from a legal standpoint. People were amazed it lasted as long as it did. And what I was able to do is through the choice of some very good people who frankly were very courageous, the justices it turned out to be you know, the Republican …
So, just to be clear here, if states want to get real creepy with it and monitor all of the pregnant women, Trump is 100 percent fine with that. Because states should be allowed to do literally whatever they want (unless they do something Trump doesn’t want to do or don’t do something he does want to do, in which case, as he explains in the interview, he will cut them off, funding-wise).
States will decide if they’re comfortable or not—
Trump: Yeah the states—
Prosecuting women for getting abortions after the ban. But are you comfortable with it?
Trump: The states are going to say. It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions. And by the way, Texas is going to be different than Ohio. And Ohio is going to be different than Michigan. I see what’s happening.
So, just to be clear, this would mean that he is comfortable with states prosecuting women for having abortions, because otherwise he would at least say “No, I do not think that would be a good idea.”
In most of the interview, he skirted questions about what he would and would not sign or veto, including a federal ban, if it came to his desk, by simply saying that it would never happen because they wouldn’t be able to get 60 votes. Now, I know and you know that if they can do it by eliminating the filibuster, that’s exactly what they’ll do. If anyone actually did believe that if Democrats graciously declined not to do it in order to pass a law protecting abortion rights for everyone (or, rather, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin declined on behalf of them) that Republicans would say “Ah yes, and now we shall graciously return that favor and not vote to change the rules the next time that we are in charge!” I’ve got some swampland in Florida and a Merrick Garland to sell them.
It is entirely possible that a national ban could come to Trump’s desk and entirely possible that he will sign it, given that he very clearly has zero qualms about any terrible thing that any abortion rights opponents might want to do. There is no line in the sand for him!
He also explained that he has very strong feelings about both the legality of mifepristone and the Comstock Act, but he can’t tell anyone what they are just yet.
Do you think women should be able to get the abortion pill mifepristone?
Trump: Well, I have an opinion on that, but I’m not going to explain. I’m not gonna say it yet. But I have pretty strong views on that. And I’ll be releasing it probably over the next week.
Well, this is a big question, Mr. President, because your allies have called for enforcement of the Comstock Act, which prohibits the mailing of drugs used for abortions by mail. The Biden Department of Justice has not enforced it. Would your Department of Justice enforce it?
Trump: I will be making a statement on that over the next 14 days. […] I actually think it’s a very important issue.
You know, I actually do believe that if he understood what it is, exactly, that the Comstock Laws ban, he might actually think it is an important issue (I think we can assume he’s probably pretty old-timey about his porn) … but I’m going to guess that he does not.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
However! As we have previously discussed, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is his playbook for a second term, and it outlines a process by which Republicans can use the Comstock Laws to make abortion almost entirely inaccessible everywhere, which is just about as good as making it illegal.
Let us quote us, if we may:
There are a variety of ways that they intend to limit access to abortion, largely having to do with what we are seeing now, with regards to abortion pills and the Comstock Act. However, if the Supreme Court were to establish that the Comstock Act can still be used to bar anything abortion-related through the mail, the next thing to push for after that is any medical equipment used to perform abortions. This, Politico noted in March, would create more or less a de facto abortion ban.
What’s clear here is what we already knew to be true — that Donald Trump will do absolutely nothing to attempt to protect pregnant people from being victimized by their states and he will definitely let anti-abortion states do whatever the hell they want to them.
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