Trump’s legacy grows as Roe is overturned
Recent developments point to ongoing impact of former president
President Joe Biden rarely mentions his predecessor by name. But as he spoke to a nation processing a seismic shift in the rights of women, he couldn’t ignore Donald Trump’s legacy.
“It was three justices named by one president — Donald Trump — who were the core of today’s decision to upend the scales of justice and eliminate a fundamental right for women in this country,” Biden said Friday after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling from 1973 that provided constitutional protections for women seeking abortions.
The abortion decision marked the apex in a week that reinforced the former president’s ongoing impact in Washington more than a year and a half after
he exited the White House.
A court that includes three Trump-appointed conservatives also decided to weaken restrictions on gun ownership. And across the street at the Capitol, which was ravaged by a mob of Trump supporters in the final days of his presidency in 2021, new details surfaced of his gross violations of democratic norms.
The GOP is now at something of a turning point in its relationship
with a man who has fundamentally transformed the party with his populist “Make America Great Again” agenda and his fight against the establishment Republicans who used to control the party. There’s a growing debate within the party about whether Trump’s resonance is beginning to fade as he lays the groundwork for a third presidential run in 2024.
Other leading Republicans, including former Vice President Mike Pence, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, are taking increasingly bold steps toward White House bids of their own. And many of Trump’s own supporters are eagerly embracing Florida Gov. Ron Desantis.
If they do run, they will all be competing for support from the same conservatives who fueled Trump’s rise.
Trump himself seems somewhat uncertain about how to navigate the political fallout from the past week, particularly the abortion ruling. He has privately expressed concern that the decision could energize Democrats going into the November elections, The New York Times first reported.
Indeed, in a Fox News interview after the abortion opinion was released, Trump said that, “in the end, this is something that will work out for everybody.”
Trump grew more emboldened as Friday unfolded, raising money off the decision and issuing a statement in which he took full credit for what he called “the biggest WIN for LIFE in a generation.”
While Democrats are hoping the decision will galvanize its voters heading into November’s midterms, Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign and White House adviser, argued the decision would be beneficial to Trump’s future political prospects, helping to cement his standing with conservative voters if he runs again.
Meanwhile, the Jan. 6 committee and related investigations looking at whether Trump and others illegally meddled in the 2020 election continue to loom.
As the committee has held a series of public hearings, few Republicans surfaced to defend Trump’s actions, which drew comparisons to President Richard Nixon’s actions during Watergate 50 years ago.
The committee showed how a defeated Trump tried to use the Justice Department for his own ends, much the way Nixon fired his top ranks in the “Saturday Night Massacre” before his resignation.