“You just ban it. The president bans it. You just don’t let it happen.”
That line from former President Donald Trump at a Fox News town hall this week was met with an eruption of applause and cheers from the all-female audience.
They were clearly thrilled at the prospect that Trump, if reelected, would solve a problem many of them apparently consider very important: trans athletes competing against girls and women.
When asked by an audience member named Linda what he would do to protect her six granddaughters “on the field and the courts” and also “in the locker rooms” from trans athletes, he answered in typically Trumpian fashion — big on bravado, short on specifics:
“It’s such an easy question,” he said. “We stop it. We stop it. We absolutely stop it. You can’t have it.”
“You just ban it. The president bans it. You just don’t let it happen. Not a big deal.”
The ensuing yelps and claps belied an obvious point — which is that Trump didn’t explain how he’d simply snap his fingers and make it so.
That’s because, like every issue Trump momentarily contemplates, it’s more complicated than that.
Just ask him what he’ll do about health care, as debate moderators did back in September.
After bragging that he would replace the Affordable Care Act — something he also promised to do in his first term but failed, and then claimed he “saved it” — he offered this: “[T]here are concepts and options we have to do that. And you’ll be hearing about it in the not-too-distant future.”
That was five weeks ago. Still no concepts or options. In fact, just Wednesday, a group of more than 1,500 physicians wrote a letter calling on Trump to finally produce a health care plan.
We know Trump will lie easily to anyone’s face, and he’ll make grandiose promises he knows he cannot deliver. But for women especially, his lies and promises are preying on some very real fears, and they are deeply cynical, manipulative, and empty.
‘Father of IVF’?
In the same women-only town hall, the issue of crime came up. Trump’s answer was that “We have to reinvigorate our police.”
How? “We’re going to let them do their job and I’m going to give them immunity. We’re going to protect them because they do things and they end up getting sued.”
Again, when asked an obvious follow up — Doesn’t immunity incentivize bad behavior like police brutality? — Trump said:
“No, because, they’re going to be some people, you say, they’re going to say, we’re not giving you immunity. What, are you crazy? Look what happened. Look what you’ve done. You’ve been terrible. But most of them are, you know, they just want to do their job.”
Also Trump bizarrely — and somewhat creepily — declared himself the “Father of IVF,” in vitro fertilization, a fertility treatment process that is now in jeopardy only because his Supreme Court appointments overturned Roe v. Wade.
And yet….
“We really are the party for IVF. We want fertilization, and it’s all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and we’re out there on IVF, even more than them. So, we’re totally in favor.”
Republican judges and lawmakers have attempted to ban IVF, limit funding to doctors who perform IVF, or criminalize IVF, while repeatedly blocking efforts in Congress to guarantee access.
To obscure from these facts, Trump went out on the campaign trail in August and announced that under a Trump administration, “your government will pay for, or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for, all costs associated with IVF treatment.”
No more Yellow Brick Road
Trump’s pattern of false promises is well-known by this point. I can’t believe anyone still falls for them.
Unless you were part of the richest 2% of income-earners, the Trump tax cuts largely did not, as promised, trickle down to middle class and working families.
Trump did not “eliminate” the federal deficit. He exploded it more than 60%.
He didn’t get Mexico to pay for his border wall. He got you to, to the tune of $15 billion.
He promised “six weeks of paid maternity leave to any mother with a newborn child whose employer does not provide the benefit.” Unless you are a federal employee, you didn’t see this come true either.
Look, ladies, I’m worried about the economy, crime, and immigration, too. I’m worried about the cost of health care, saddling my kid and grandkids with more debt, high mortgage rates, education, mass shootings, women’s health, and opioids. Who isn’t?
But we’re no longer in our ruby slippers and pigtails on the Yellow Brick Road. We’ve all now been to Oz, we’ve seen the man behind the curtain, we know he isn’t real. Don’t fall for it again.
S.E. Cupp is the host of “S.E. Cupp Unfiltered” on CNN.
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