‘I did not have sex with a porn star.” Donald Trump’s statement in response to an arguably ad hominem attack from Joe Biden during this presidential election’s first debate must have given more than a few of us flashbacks to Bill Clinton’s “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is,” who tried to linguistically dance around Monica Lewinsky’s allegations. The main differences were that Clinton was the sitting president at that time, and the problem for his administration — and the United States — was not the sex but the abuse of power. Trump, meanwhile, has always had notorious baggage, and even during his prime, his character was questioned in New York Post headlines. The debate offered no indication that he has overcome those character flaws.
Trump was right to call out Democratic extremism on abortion. But the second question of the debate called out both candidates’ ignorance on the issue. “First of all, the Supreme Court just approved the abortion pill, and I agree with their decision to have done that, and I will not block it,” Trump said. The Court did no such thing. It issued a decision on the abortion-pill case based not on the merits or safety of chemical abortion but on whether the plaintiff had standing for the case, which in no way indicated approval of chemical abortion. Trump’s words in support of abortion pills were callous. Chemical abortion, increasingly the default method of abortion, is a bloody abandonment of pregnant girls and women.
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