Former President Donald Trump‘s “inconsistent” messaging on abortion could backfire with multiple groups of voters in November, according to political analysts.
Trump ignited fury from anti-abortion conservatives on Thursday after saying during an NBC interview that he believes Florida’s six-week abortion ban “is too short” and he would be “voting that we need more than six weeks” in response to a question on whether he would be supporting a state ballot measure known as Amendment 4, which would enshrine abortion rights up 24 weeks of pregnancy.
By Friday, the former president had walked back his remarks, promising to vote against the measure during a Fox News interview. Trump argued that it was “unacceptable” for “radical” Democrats to back “abortion in the ninth month,” while also repeating false claims about blue states having laws “where you can actually execute the baby after birth.”
Political analyst Craig Agranoff told Newsweek via text message on Friday that Trump’s “recent remarks on abortion and Amendment 4 may appear inconsistent to some voters” in the presidential election. Reproductive rights are a key campaign focus of Trump’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
“It’s important for candidates to clearly articulate their positions on such critical issues to provide voters with a clear understanding of where they stand,” said Agranoff. “Without consistent messaging, it can be challenging for voters to make informed decisions.”
Political analyst and Dillard University Professor Robert Collins told Newsweek that Trump was not being “clear” in his abortion messaging and predicted that the issue would hurt him in November, particularly among suburban voters who are women.
“Trump is trying to triangulate on the position of abortion so that he can look like a centrist and capture both pro-life and pro-choice voters,” Collins said in a text. “It won’t work. The subject is too emotional for most voters to see nuance.”
“There are two sides,” he added. “He needs to simply pick a side. Right now, he’s angering voters on both sides, including pro-life Republicans. The polling shows that abortion is the issue that hurts him the most with suburban women.”
Polls do suggest that a majority of Americans support abortion rights. A poll released this week by YouGov/The Economist found that 55 percent of U.S. adults favored restoring national abortion rights to where they were under Roe v. Wade, while 30 percent opposed the idea and 15 percent were uncertain.
Support for restoring Roe v. Wade, which Trump has repeatedly boasted about helping to overturn by appointing conservative Supreme Court justices, was 61 percent among all women, according to the poll.
Former Trump administration official Anthony Scaramucci said during a CNN appearance on Friday that the former president was trying to “gaslight” voters on abortion rights and predicted that the issue would damage his standing with women voters.
“He’s in trouble,” Scaramucci said. “It’s gonna be very hard for women, even conservative women, to give up their reproductive freedom to JD Vance and Donald Trump. And he knows that. He’s got very good political instincts, and so this is a vexing problem for him right now.”
Political consultant Karen Finney, an ex-campaign spokesperson for former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, said during a CNN appearance later on Friday that Trump tried “to do the same thing” with regard to abortion during the 2016 election.
“[Trump would] say different things in different venues [and] let his campaign then try to ‘correct it’ so that basically everybody gets to hear a little bit of what they want to hear,” said Finney.
Bill Pugliano