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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win. If there's been one constant about Donald Trump, it's been his ever-changing position on abortion and his desire to avoid it at all costs.
Unless, of course, he's taking credit in front of evangelicals for overturning Roe v. Wade. Well, he finally stated on Monday, on the day of a solar eclipse that was captivating the nation, something that he was hoping would be ignored, possibly avoided, that he is leaving it up to the states to decide.
We've literally waited almost two years since Roe v. Wade was overturned to hear where he stands on the issue. All we've known is what he has privately deliberated on, and it's based on really great reporting. We know that he thought that Ron DeSantis' six-week ban was too extreme in Florida, and he considered putting forth an abortion plan where it is banned after 15 or 16 weeks.
He's clearly trying to thread the needle or at least neutralize a position that could influence swing voting women from the suburbs and the battleground states. He'll obviously need them to win the election, not just his evangelical base, who will almost absolutely vote for him over Joe Biden anyway.
But his stance on abortion won't go away. The next question is obviously what happens when a piece of legislation banning abortion nationally hits the resolute desk? What does he do? Does he sign it or does he veto it?
But his statement, it just sounded like a cynical political ploy. He basically said that Republicans were giving grounds to Democrats because he believes that Roe helped Democrats win elections that they never should have won. And surely his latest statement has not
close the door. Democrats will certainly pin him to policies in some of the more extreme states where abortion is basically outright banned. So how do we get here? Well, I speak to one of Trump's first aides, Sam Numburg, who coached Trump when he was pro-choice around 2011 on how to sound more pro-life. In fact, Trump had such a hard time remembering policy that Sam Numburg
got him to remember to say that he believes in exceptions in the case of life, incest and rape by using the initials L.I.R. like the Long Island Railroad. Maybe a reference only a guy from Queens would know. But yes, we call it the L.I.R.R. Sam actually believes that Trump never wanted Roe versus Wade to be overturned and that he only said it to win elections and is actually annoyed at the justices who haven't helped him with his criminal issues.
Sam, thank you for taking a break from WrestleMania to have this serious discussion right now about the evolving position that Donald Trump has had on abortion. First of all, it's the Raw after WrestleMania. And the new champion, Cody Rhodes, was with the people's champ, The Rock.
right when we started filming this and I was, you know, so this is really only for you, Tara, and for the Ringer universe. Shout out, by the way, I love the wrestling Ringer show. Donald Trump is also a very big fan of wrestling, as we know. So obviously today was a day where Donald Trump was cornered, right? He gave his position on abortion, an issue he has long struggled with. As you know, you were one of his original aides. You worked with him
back in 2011 when he was, by all accounts, pro-choice, something he's admitted that he's changed on. But I kind of wanted to go through the history of Donald Trump on abortion. And obviously, when you have a political client, you have to do opposition on them yourself. And
And I know that he's asked you a lot of questions about abortion and how he should answer them. But let's start. Where exactly was he when you guys met in 2011? The most public position that he ever took was when he was exploring a third party run in 2000. He had a book, which was Ghosts Run With Roger Stone, called The America We Deserve. And in the book, he said that he was pro-choice, but would ban partial birth abortions.
Essentially, that was an accepted position. That was the mainstream position at that time, along with the Republican Party to an extent, which was a larger conversation. When I started dealing directly with him and talking about this issue, in preparation for his presidential run, it would have been around 2013.
but when he was exploring and looking into it and having some fun, as you like to say, uh, during the 2012 cycle, which, uh, a lot of your listeners will remember as the time started doing the birth certificate, except yeah, the birth or conspiracies. He had an interview very early on with David Brody. Then at, uh, the Christian broadcast network, uh,
Pat Robertson's network. And David Brody asked him his position on life. And he said that he is pro-life. Brody then followed up and
and said, well, you've donated to Planned Parenthood, which he has. He's attended Planned Parenthood galas in New York. You took a position. You said publicly you were pro-choice. Where's the change? And he told a story about how he had a friend who was an older man and he was married to a younger woman. The younger woman got pregnant. They were driving to have an abortion. And the older man, his friend, he kept calling him his friend,
At the last minute decided that he didn't want to have it. And the younger wife didn't want to have the abortion to begin with. And the child has been born. And I believe he even said it was a son. And that man loves it. And that man loves his young child very, very much.
So that was the explanation that he gave. Yeah. And the friend we think is Trump himself and the son is Barron, essentially, right? Well, yeah. And now that would be, listen, I'm going to be very clear about interested in being sued by Donald and going through litigation again, even though I beat him the first time. I want to be very clear. I never had this discussion with him, but I heard from a trusted confidant about
of his and mine at that time that they were in the car and the confidant said, yeah, you're a friend. You're talking about yourself. And Trump said, then Mr. Trump said, don't tell anyone. He started laughing. He said, yeah, don't tell anyone. Oh, God. Okay. You can also look from my dealings with him, too. There was a side of him. The one side I saw of him that nobody would believe, really, was
In terms of with Melania, he was always very concerned about Barron. He loves Barron very much. He would call and check with Melania what's going on with Barron. He gave an interview with Oprah. Oprah, you can see him with Barron as a baby. And he says he's holding Barron and says, look at these little cute hands.
Now, that's the opposite of when you're talking about when I was working for doing a forensic, let's say, looking into his past public proclamations on the issue of life. Something that I found very problematic, which eventually Andrew Kaczynski found when he was at BuzzFeed, now he's at CNN.
was in an interview with Howard Stern. They're talking about abortion and Trump is recounting a conversation he had with Marla where Marla says to him, honey, I have a humongous surprise. And he says, well, what's that? She then says, I'm pregnant. So he tells Howard, so I responded, oh, what are we going to do about this? And then she said, we're going to have a baby.
So I said, oh, and the situation was, was that he wanted to have Tiffany aborted. So look, but look, at the end of the day, from a political point of view, I want to be very clear about this. Past public positions don't really mean anything in general. If you have a private citizen running, it's never our political office.
past public positions on policy points really don't mean anything and it wasn't going to be favorable for us. How did you prepare him for questions about it? Because it's not like they get a pass. He was still asked about it all the time. So how did you prepare him for it? Well, first of all, I was working for David Perdue during the 2014 cycle. And if you look at that campaign, by the way, that was very similar to the way Trump's campaign was run. A lot of the same themes. And it was kind of like a...
You know, it was a dry run. David Sattler, they're very similar. David is the CEO of Reebok, CEO of Dollar General. Trump sent him. So what do you say about abortion? He says, well, I'm pro-life, except for, you know, the exceptions. So Donald said the exceptions, the exceptions.
And David said, yeah, it's just the exceptions, but I'm pro-life. So then I had a problem, which was when I worked with Donald, is to the extent of anyone I was told by Roger he had ever seen could try to
uh, to try to, uh, nobody could handle God, but could try to teach a policy. He would listen. And what I had always noticed with him is if you make it easy for him to memorize, kind of like for me and the way I was able to pass the bar exam, if you make it easy for him to memorize, he will, he will get it. And, uh, his policy, uh, I said to him, so you're, you just say you're, you're pro-life.
And except for but you believe in the exceptions of life, incest and and rape. And I showed him clips from George W. Bush, Mr. Evangelical, you know, McCain that way, saying essentially that exactly that.
I made some clips and I cut a YouTube for, I cut a doc on YouTube. I took him off YouTube. I cut something for him to watch, which is also the best way for him to learn. But like he also had to be asked questions about Roe v. Wade. The important point is, and when I get back to social issues, is Donald from the very beginning said, I'm not going to say I'm anti-marriage.
I'm going to say I personally believe in traditional marriage. But what I'm not going to say is that I'm going to support a constitutional amendment to codify marriage between a man and a woman. It's a lie. It's ridiculous. And I'm not into it. And I'm just not going to do that. I'm going to leave it to the states. But the other thing is when he was looking and exploring marriage,
into, uh, possibly running for governor, which was a Michael Cohen fiasco. Andrew Cuomo at that time was the governor and Cuomo was trying to position himself, position Trump. Uh, he was concerned about Trump, not that he would lose Trump, but that he would have to spend a lot of money to be that money that he wanted to be spending because he planned on running for president at that time. And he started positioning Trump as a radical right. And in the run up, uh,
to figuring that he's facing Donald Trump. He passed a law codifying gay marriage in the state of New York. And he also passed a law essentially allowing abortion anytime during the cycle. Donald was disgusted by partial birth abortion. Donald is disgusted. He's absolutely disgusted by late term abortion. But those are so rare. I don't want to have the abortion debate here.
I'm just telling you that his personal, his personal, he's absolutely disgusted by it. He winces at it. It's usually done for the health of the mother, but okay, fine. We don't have to have the debate. Do I think that he ever thought that Roe v. Wade would be overturned? The answer is no. I thought, I think that he thought it was an empty promise and it was something to fire up the base of the Republican Party. But it was something that he did to shore up
his conservative bona fides and his conservative support. I think that's really, you know, all that I really have on him. Yeah, no, you know him well, though. Like, how do you think we landed here at this place where Trump is cornered on abortion, doesn't know how to respond, has been literally delaying this since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. It's been almost two years. And he just...
won't say what his position is. When has Donald been the weakest ever with the Republican Party? Two separate times, and they were recent. January 6th after he left office, and up until around, you know, Biden's botched Afghani sale withdrawal, some were started to go up there, and after the midterms.
Now, I'm of the belief, me and other people, and I support the 2022 midterms. The 2022 midterms, the one where everyone blamed him for picking these crazy candidates and he was still harping on about election denialism. And these were critical races that could really decide the election, frankly, in 2024.
The easy thing for Donald at that point, though, was to say that's not true. It wasn't because of me. It was because of the Brown decision. I believe it was the decision that the decision from the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. It wasn't me. It was that decision for my dealings with him. He has completely blocked out that he has any responsibility for the midterms.
And has put in his head that this is the death issue. This is the death now issue. And probably also hates the Supreme Court justices because they overturned the rule, but they never decided with him on any of his criminal stuff.
Ironically, but here's the thing, though. I kind of think it was a little bit of both. Roe definitely energized the Democratic base. Like, there is no doubt that women went out to vote. The Democrats credit Roe as well for helping them in the midterms. And yeah. And the fact that you have shitty candidates, it was probably a combination of both. Like the Republicans should have won back the Senate. Right. Well, the point is, is that is that people say it's a combination of
Democrats, they claim that overturning Roe v. Wade helped them win midterms. What I would say is Republican gains came in Florida. They came in Iowa and they came from upstate New York.
Those were plus states. And in each of those states, they ran on crime. Yeah, they ran on crime. Very pro-life, very anti-LGBT. Look, I don't know. It's a longer debate. But what I would tell you is Donald endorsed dog shit candidates. And his only test was, could I get money out of it from donors? And or do they believe that the machines were hacked from aliens in outer space? And that's why he lost the election.
Okay. Those are the people. Okay. But even Democrats, they believe that the fight over abortion rights helps them at the polls, right? They've, they were out, they outperformed this last midterms. They're fighting right now to get anti-abortion measures on the ballots. People show up for it. Women show up for it. So yes, there were a combination of things, but like if this election is going to be decided on the margins, then, um,
Donald Trump can't afford to lose, you know, those swing voting suburban women in the battleground states like Pennsylvania and Michigan. And I don't know that they're going to go out just for abortion, but like,
It's one of the stronger positions that Democrats have. Well, look, he's not going to get those voters. Those women are not going to vote for him if their number one issue is abortion. They're just not going to vote for him. So his job is going to be to make it. Why are they going to vote the day they vote? What is their top threshold issue? Is it the economy, national security?
Is it that they're worried that an illegal immigrant is going to jump out of the bushes and kill their kids? Then yeah, he'll get their vote. What he's doing is trying to make his issues, immigration and crime, or just like immigration and crime scarier than not having an abortion. Correct. What he's trying to do is make it that it's a problem.
It's the most important issue for the voter. Right. So he has to neutralize abortion. But the position he took today is a complete loser. And why is that? Because now he could be tied to any policy. He could be tied to the Florida six-week bill.
He could be tied to Alabama. He could be tied to Mississippi or whatever else these other laws are. These laws that are outright abortion bans. He could be tied to any incident that's going to be shown where, you know, there's some tragedy about a woman that wasn't able to get an abortion. You don't think that he's already been tied to that up to this point? My position would have been, doesn't really matter, not that he gives a shit, but my position would have been, you take a finite position,
You explain the reality of the system, what it is, and you attack the other side. Would you have advised him to stay 15 weeks? I would have said a little less because Roe v. Wade, I believe, codified 15 weeks and we overturned Roe v. Wade. I'm looking at this politically. All the women listeners can hate me. I would have said first trimester, obviously exceptions, you know, strict exceptions and
You know, other issues like that, but in general, 12 weeks. 12 weeks. Okay. So you think that this position that he takes sort of pins him to every bad position?
piece of legislation across the map. Right. He took the position that was the bullshit, easy position that Republicans used to always say because they thought Roe v. Wade would never be overturned, which is Roe v. Wade is bad law. It should be left to the states. It was an activist decision. It's not enumerated as a fundamental right in the Constitution. I believe in a culture of life.
And it's a state's rights issue. You know, something along those lines. It's not for the federal government to get involved in. It was certainly not for the Supreme Court. And he still thinks that he has that ability to be able to take that position. He doesn't.
He doesn't. That position doesn't work. He also has to answer to the fact that if he is president and he is presented with legislation to sign that bans abortion nationally, how is he going to vote? Like, it's not over yet. He hasn't answered the question. That's another good point as well. I didn't even think of that one. You should work as a political...
consultant. Yeah. I mean, he, he has to have an answer to that. Well, his answer, but his answer will then just be, well, I'm leaving it. It's a state's rights issue. I'm not going to sign anything. So he's going to leave it on the desk. He's going to leave it on the resolute desk. But by the way, you keep talking about thinking about, uh, independent, uh, suburbanites voters.
What about getting out your base? What about getting out Christians that have not voted? You know, Donald Trump may get the majority. He may get the majority of Republican evangelicals who voted in past elections, but he has to get new evangelicals to come out and vote for him. This is an excuse for these non-politically affiliate, you know, aligned type voters to just not be involved in this process. And there are a
lot of them. Really? Because I thought that he owned them. I thought that he owned those people already. Like they were not going to vote for Biden either way. I'm talking about getting new ones. They're not even low propensity. There are church going voters. They're not voters. They're not voters. So what do they, they don't vote and they go to church. Correct. And they don't vote. And he needs those people to vote. And this is one way that they're not going to vote for him.
today. So they pray instead of vote. That's their prerogative. I didn't even know these people existed. He has to find them and get them. So he needs every vote he can get because the other issue is, as I said to you previously, and as I think everybody has basically said is, yeah, he has a high floor, but his floor is pretty much a ceiling too. Meaning he ain't getting 50% nationally. He's not getting close to 50% nationally.
He's getting 47, 46 and something, maybe 47 and something. And he needs to find voters. He needs to find new voters. So...
This would be something that if I was working for Democrats, I would do it to depress turnout on his side. And say he's not hardcore enough on abortion. Correct. He doesn't support life. The other issue, too, is that it's a larger discussion, too, because he has to take other positions in terms of is he going to fund government research that's already funded? Is he correct? Partial birth abortion ban, except things like that.
So this was this was really, really stupid. And I would also go back to besides the fact that as your reporting has showed, he's agonizing over it. I'm telling you, I hate to answer the question. What is Donald Trump thinking on this one? I can't answer it. He has completely blocked out that he has any responsibility for the midterms. OK, so.
By the way, he has a hell of a lot of responsibility for the midterms. More responsibility than the overturning of Roe v. Wade. I don't give a fuck what anybody tells you. I don't care what any Democrat says.
I followed everywhere. I lost races. I lost primaries. But he holds no responsibility for it. He even broke that in one of these true social posts. And this is the decision. And this is a very big threat. And he has come away and he has to decide how he's going to solve this and take the Republican Party forward and be able to win the election.
Right. I mean, he said Tudor Dixon in Michigan was too hardcore on abortion. He said Doug Mastriano, running for governor of Pennsylvania, was too... Doug Mastriano's a fucking lunatic who was going to storm the Capitol on January 6th. That's why they lost Doug Mastriano. That's why Doug... You see what I mean? And that goes exactly to what I'm saying. Tudor Dixon lost... The Michigan GOP is a joke. They have no money. They have no organization.
So, yeah, she had zero chance to ever win. Those ads that were running against her on abortion were really brutal. Were they? Okay, fine, fine. So if that's the reason, then that's the reason. That's the reason she lost. I mean, it's not the only reason. It's always a bunch of things. But I do think Roe helped the Democrats in a big way. But there's another issue, too. Is it going to continue? Now, this is another thing for you to get somebody else to talk about. Get a Democrat. I'm interested to see. Just because it helped in 2022...
Because it's still going to have the same effect in 2024. Meaning if people were talking about 9-11 and terrorism in 2004, nobody gave a shit about it in 2008.
You know what I'm saying? Well, when you have like these IVF rulings, that definitely turbo charges the interest. It could. And then and then you'll also have every you know, you're going to have a bunch of things, which is what Republicans like me think about the liberal media, is that they're going to take these instances that are that are that are tragedies.
And they're going to make it out of that. Those should be the threshold issue. Even if the liberal media doesn't do anything about it, the Biden campaign is already doing it. Every time I've been watching YouTube on there's a Biden ad about Trump taking credit for overturning Roe. He said that before the Iowa caucus where he was worried about the Iowa. So he didn't want to have to say that.
I bet you behind the scenes, he hates those justices. He hates Kavanaugh. He hates Gorsuch. He hates her. And they never rule in his favor on anything for any of the criminal investigations. And he thinks they probably fucked him on this decision politically. Yeah, it's interesting. He was worried about making this position. He wanted to wait until after the primaries. He thought it would hurt him. It would hurt him. And by the way, what I'm telling you is it could hurt him in the general. You think the position he's taken right now will hurt him in the general? Absolutely.
I know you said he has to find new voters. Yeah, not only does he have to find new voters, look at the low turnout in a lot of these states. There was low turnout, low enthusiasm. Iowa. It was like nobody showed up to the caucus. That's an evangelical state, you know? The weather was horrible, though. The weather was horrible. There was an NFL playoff game, and they did it on Martin Luther King Day like idiots.
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I wonder if Trump chose this total eclipse to be for the day that he releases his statement on abortion because he knew that everyone would be distracted by it.
Yeah, maybe. Coverage has been wall to wall. It's been, you know, cable news is all about the total eclipse. Who's talking about abortion today? And meanwhile, all he's doing is talking about is let's go. I'm going. This is the first time I've been on this. But he's only he's only fueling the news cycle by getting into fights with Lindsey Graham about it. As I'm on your podcast, I'm this is the first time I've signed on to this stupid thing in weeks. True social. Let's see. True.
Truth Social. Truth Social. It's a billion dollar company. You know how Democrats are reeling when they have no response to my recent statement on abortion other than he's only kidding. He will change it or he won't do it. He'll do something else. I guess this means we will win the election because they are so bad on every issue. This is the only issue they're focused on. Well, that's what he thinks. He could think that.
It's not completely off base there. You think Democrats feel flat footed right now on this? No, that's what he's saying. Yeah. But what do you think Democrats are thinking? Oh, who knows what your wonderful, all your sources are showing him. They're probably just feeding him like the best headlines possible today. You know, all the people around him.
They're probably feeding him no criticism. So the one thing he saw probably on cable news, they couldn't hide from him, was Lindsey Graham. Oh, no. Fox did something on the blowback, the Republican blowback to his decision. And obviously, Susan B. Anthony put out a statement coming out against it. But they still said, we support Trump. We do not support Joe Biden for president. So it's been a day of Trump trying to thread the needle. I don't know if it'll actually work. Yeah.
Well, then here's another issue, by the way, that we can end on this, Tara. Sure. It's all a political calculation to me. It's always been a political calculation, though, don't you think? Earth to your listeners. Yeah, everything is a political calculation by politicians. Shocker. But what I'm saying is he literally writes it.
He literally writes it. He writes it right here. He writes it in the statement itself. Oh, he says, if we want to win this, right? That's what he's saying. Yeah. When the Supreme Court had the courage to do the right thing legally, all caps, and terminate Roe v. Wade, all of those people, including Lindsey Graham and Marjorie,
Dan, I can't pronounce her last name, but Susan B. Anthony, that were quote unquote, one day after the victory were going in absolutely no help as the Democrats staged rallies and won elections. They never should have won. Oh, you don't say Republican Democrats won elections. They never should have won. You see, that goes back to me telling you.
That he's blaming all the midterms on this. No, midterms were your fault, Donald. Were your fault. Okay? Nobody fucking asked you to endorse those lunatics, you moron. Those lunatics asked him to endorse him. And I think Sean Hannity encouraged him to endorse those people. But...
Real quick, just to bring it all back. He does, even in his first statement, he does, he does say this is, he basically makes it clear that if we're going to win this election, we have to neutralize this issue, essentially, even in the video. And that's not the way to do it. I mean, why would you say it like that? Well, I say this as saying in general, but as we know, as we know,
90% of his primary voters, he could literally take a shit on them and they'll thank him. So I don't, you know. Yeah, he could sell that actually. I really thought used tissues were coming next after the Bible and the sneakers. Although people like the sneakers. I don't think they'll really care. I mean, they actually think, a lot of them actually think he's Jesus.
They do. I'm very curious about these Christians that don't vote. Bob van der Blas could be somebody you could talk to. His take on what happened in the caucus, et cetera, things like that. DeSantis, what happened? You know, I think it's very interesting. It could be interesting. Well, thanks, Sam. I appreciate it. Always good to get the...
The briefing on the evolving Trump from the OG who taught him everything he knows back in the day. And then got fired six weeks into the campaign and sued. As one does. Okay. You join a very large list of people who have left Trump's orbit only to then write a book and or sue him or put out a statement against him. Or leak sound. Who was it? Omarosa. Yeah, she was actually recording the whole thing.
That was pretty epic. Well, thanks, Sam. Appreciate it. That was another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. I want to thank my producers, Christopher Sutton and Connor Nevins. If you like this show, please share it, rate it, send it to your friends. If you like my reporting, please go to puck.news slash Tara Palmieri and sign up for my newsletter, The Best and the Brightest. You can use my discount code, Tara20. See you on Thursday.