Donald Trump says he'd veto an abortion ban, but why would you trust him?

You are not a fool, but if you were, the American news media would have you believe that Donald Trump and JD Vance had come around on abortion. At the vice presidential debate last week, Vance denied ever supporting a national ban on abortion, prompting Trump to chime in on social media that he "WOULD NOT SUPPORT A FEDERAL ABORTION BAN, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, AND WOULD, IN FACT, VETO IT." Which led to headlines like you see above.

But as you can read in Jessica Valenti's Abortion, Every Day newsletter or the Atlantic (and as you likely already guessed), Trump and Vance are just playing games. Vance has been saying what he actually supports is a "minimum national standard" or "federal minimum standard"—which is cute, because what he really means is a maximum national standard. In August, Vance told Meet the Press that Senator Lindsey Graham's proposed 15-week abortion ban was actually a "federal minimum standard." But Graham's proposal would make abortion illegal after 15 weeks of pregnancy across the nation; a blue state wouldn't have the ability to bump that number up and make abortion legal until later on. So 15 weeks is not a minimum of any kind. It's a maximum. It's also arbitrary and nowhere close to the former status quo under Roe v. Wade. A minimum national standard is just what you call a nationwide abortion ban when you want to get elected so you can pass one, but you have to fool voters because most of them don't like abortion bans.

For some people, this is apparently tricky stuff to parse. "I do think women should have the right to have an abortion," one such hypothetical individual might think. "But I also don't think women should be having abortions willy-nilly. This 'minimal national standard' deal sounds pretty good, because you have to have some limits on abortion. And Trump says he would veto a national abortion ban, so surely he wouldn't just, like, make it impossible for everyone who needed an abortion to get one."

In situations like these, I find it useful to employ what is known as a heuristic technique. A heuristic is like a rule of thumb: a way to figure out something quickly, a way that isn't perfect but is close enough, and useful because it saves time. And if reproductive rights are important to you, there is a very reliable heuristic for determining whether to support a Democrat or a Republican:

Assume the Republican is full of shit.

This heuristic is so reliable—and the readers of this newsletter so wise—there's a good chance you're already using it yourself. But maybe someone you know hasn't gotten there yet. Maybe they don't understand why it's safe to assume a Republican is full of shit when making promises about abortion.

Starting with Vance himself: He told a podcast in 2022 that he "certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally." That was just two years ago! And at the debate last week, he didn't explain how his position on abortion bans had changed over that time, even though that was the question he was asked directly. He straight-up lied, saying he'd "never supported a national ban," and then he waxed sentimental about "winning back people's trust" without ever saying more about what kind of abortion rights he would support. Full of shit.

Then there's Trump, a resident of Florida, where abortion is currently banned after six weeks—earlier than many people realize they're pregnant. In August, he was asked how he'd vote in November on the state's Amendment 4—the Right to Abortion Initiative—which would enshrine the right to abortion in Florida's constitution. Trump wouldn't answer the question directly, but called the six-week limit "too short" and then said, "I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks." A day later, after hearing from angry supporters in Christian antiabortion groups, he announced he'd be voting no on 4. This is not a man with rigorously thought-out, deeply held convictions about abortion or anything else. This is a man who says whatever he thinks will make people want to vote for him in the moment. (And he's not going to default, ever, to supporting women. Trump has never respected women. He cheats on them, he brags about grabbing them by the pussy, and he rapes them.) He's full of shit.

Trump has also bragged about getting Roe v. Wade overturned, of course, by appointing three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. Those three justices—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—were all asked about Roe during their Senate confirmation hearings, and all gave carefully worded non-answers suggesting they would respect it as legal precedent. Even if it's true they never directly promised not to overturn Roe, they were being self-evidently mealy-mouthed in the hope of convincing Americans that's what they meant. You know what another way of saying "mealy-mouthed" is? Full of shit.

Widening the scope a bit, recall too that for years, the GOP line on overturning Roe was that abortion should be returned to the states to decide. ("We gave it back to the states" is how Trump put it earlier this year.) And yet, as we've seen, Republicans don't want the states to decide. They want minimum national standards. They want to prevent residents of states where abortion is banned from traveling to other states for abortions. In 2018 and 2021, they introduced legislation for a 20-week national abortion ban! For the Republican Party, it's not about supporting abortion rights but simply wanting them to be codified in legislation rather than a Supreme Court ruling. And when they claim it is, they're full of shit.

This pattern holds true across the party. Every so often, you might see something like Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, a Republican governor of a blue state, signing a bill that abortion rights groups like. But you shouldn't mistake it for actual support for abortion rights. You just need to know that Republicans won't have your back on abortion but want you to think they do. (In news that just came out, they made clear once again that they don't even care about letting you have an abortion in a medical emergency.) You're not ever gonna go wrong operating on the assumption that they're full of shit.

This is fun

Stand-up comic Nate Bargatze hosted SNL this weekend for the second time, bringing us a sequel to what was probably last season's best sketch, "Washington's Dream." If you haven't seen the original, watch that and then this one. (I also enjoyed "Water Park" from this weekend, because you immediately know what's going to happen, and that just makes it better.)

News, arguably worth knowing

No, Ukraine isn't getting FEMA money. Since Hurricane Helene beat the crap out of Asheville, North Carolina, and other parts of the southeastern U.S. a week and a half ago, there have been a lot of conspiracy theories flying around online, claiming there's been no response from the government or the Red Cross; or that the Federal Emergency Management Agency doesn't have enough funding to help, because it's all gone to foreigners; or that the government or possibly the Jews created the hurricane.

If you see someone saying this stuff, the News & Observer in Raleigh put together a thorough debunking.

Different fights for different (but interconnected) reasons. Today is the anniversary of Hamas's attacks on Israel, which killed nearly 1,200 people. For the last year, Israel—abetted by the U.S.—has been waging a brutal, many would say genocidal war of retaliation against the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. Israel also just launched an attack on Lebanon, which borders it on the north. I know very little about the Middle East, so I was interested to read this post by Josh Marshall of TPM, in which he explains, rudimentarily, how these conflicts are different but related. The short version is: Whatever you think of Hamas and its tactics, the Palestinians have a legitimate grievance with Israel, which has kept the Palestinian territories under military occupation for decades. What's going on with Lebanon is different: After the Hamas attacks last October 7, the Hezbollah militia took up a position in Lebanon and has been sending missiles and the occasional raiding party over the border into Israel, leading Israel to evacuate tens of thousands of citizens from their homes on the Lebanese border. Israel's incursion into Lebanon is a response to the attacks on Israelis by Hezbollah, which is part of the coalition that has long wanted to end Israel's existence as a state. So Hezbollah hasn't been attacking Israel out of support for Palestine, so much as taking advantage of the Gaza conflict to pursue its long-standing grudge against Israel.

A turd of a man. On Saturday night, billionaire Elon Musk joined Donald Trump onstage at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania. Musk jumped up and down, and it looked weird.

Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022 and wants us to call it X now, changed his profile pic on the site to a new one in which he's wearing a black "Make America Great Again" cap. Which, people have pointed out, makes this tweet look even more ridiculous than it did when he posted it:

Come the fuck on, dude.

Thank you for joining me for this first official issue of Having a Normal One! It took longer than I expected to put together, which I should have expected. I'm feeling okay about it, and I hope you are too. If you have any thoughts, hit me up at joshwimmer@gmail.com, and always feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you know.