'Trying to nail Jell-O to a wall': On hot-button issues, Trump avoids straight answers

Less than a year ago, Donald Trump took a victory lap for his role in reversing the landmark Supreme Court case that assured women access to abortion.

“I was able to kill Roe v. Wade,” he gloated in an online post in May 2023. “Without me there would be no 6 weeks, 10 weeks, 15 weeks, or whatever is finally agreed to. Without me the pro Life movement would have just kept losing. Thank you President TRUMP!!!”

After positioning himself as an anti-abortion champion, Trump shifted four months later to talk of bringing national consensus.

“I think both sides are going to like me,” he said in an interview with NBC News.

Then, last month, word leaked he would seek a nationwide ban. His campaign called The New York Times report “fake news.” But Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, an ally to the former president, has now told NBC News that “Trump is warming up to 16 weeks.” On Tuesday, Trump mentioned 15 weeks in an interview.

Trump’s ping-ponging on abortion is just one instance of how the former president hasn’t articulated a decisive stance on a critical political issue — though he has said an abortion proposal is forthcoming. With the general election now coming into sharper focus, Trump’s plan of action remains murky on some of the weightiest subjects that would come before him if he took the reins of executive power.

Even after the presidential primary — where candidates’ plans are typically closely litigated — voters have little visibility on Trump’s specific agenda on abortion, the Israel-Gaza war, Ukraine and Social Security, among other issues.

In some cases, Trump has employed a longtime tactic of seemingly taking every side of an issue, with parties able to read what they want into the statements. In others, he suddenly flip-flops. For instance, in 2020, Trump signed an executive order that would ban TikTok if it didn’t sever its ties with a Chinese owner. It was struck down in court. Last week, as Congress considered a similar bill, Trump reversed himself, opposing a TikTok ban. That move came after Trump met with a billionaire Republican mega-donor tied to the company.

While it’s early, so far it’s working for Trump. He’s held a modest but consistent lead over President Joe Biden in most nationwide and battleground state polls.

Patrick Murray, director of the Polling Institute at Monmouth University, said Trump has long leaned on reaching voters by exploiting grievances and promising a shift in their circumstances.

“Trump’s appeal is based on articulating a sense of fear and change in society and not on providing real solutions to those issues,” Murray said. “It’s one of the reasons why he and his allies put a stop to the bipartisan border security bill, because making moves to solve the problem undermines the core reason for his appeal, which is that there is a reason to fear something out there.”

Trump’s campaign took issue with the contention that Trump hasn’t offered specifics on major issues.

“President Trump has released a plethora of extensive policy plans to fix Joe Biden’s crises, including securing our southern border, returning America to energy dominance, saving the auto industry, and ending the nightmare of homelessness in American cities, just to name a few,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump national spokesperson, said in a statement.

Abortion

With abortion, Trump has to walk the line of appeasing his conservative Christian base while attempting not to alienate moderate swing voters.

“It’s like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall to find what his position is,” said Mike Noble, an independent pollster and CEO of Predictive Insights. Noble said it’s no accident that the former president would attempt in the general election campaign to avoid being pinned down on abortion.

“It’s intentional,” Noble said. “It’s just a bad issue for Republicans.”

Trump has acknowledged as much, noting that Republicans have to learn how to talk about abortion if they don’t want to be punished electorally.

“This issue cost us unnecessarily, but dearly, in the midterms,” he said in September.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony, an anti-abortion organization, supported a Trump move toward a 16-week abortion ban, saying in a statement last month that he wants to “lead in finding consensus, and this is around where the nation is.”

But with an abortion ban, Trump must navigate tricky politics, even within his own party. The prospect of the marquee candidate on the ticket pushing a federal abortion ban would clash with battleground Republicans running down-ballot in November who softened their abortion stances by rejecting such policies.

And reproductive rights groups want nothing to do with any ban.

“The question we should be asking isn’t when it’s OK for politicians to interfere in people’s personal medical decisions, it’s if,” Angela Vasquez Giroux, Reproductive Freedom for All vice president of communications and research, said in a statement. “And voters have already resoundingly answered that question with seven different ballot initiatives and dozens of elections since Dobbs was overturned: it’s not for politicians to decide.”

Asked Tuesday if indeed Trump’s federal abortion ban proposal was forthcoming, Leavitt characterized the next step as negotiations that have yet to begin. She touted his appointing three Supreme Court justices who were critical to overturning Roe.

“As President Trump has repeatedly stated, he will sit down with both sides and negotiate a deal that everyone will be happy with,” she said.

Israel-Gaza

In the immediate weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, Trump criticized intelligence failures and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying he “let us down.” Trump, who made Israel central to his foreign policy agenda in his first term, had more recently developed a strained relationship with Netanyahu.

After a backlash over those remarks at a time when Israel had been attacked, he expressed his support for Israel and boasted that he “kept Israel safe” when he was in office. He also vowed he wouldn’t allow Gazan refugees into the U.S. and said he would “cut off every penny of money that we send to the Palestinians and the terrorists on day one.”

But as the war dragged on, Trump for months said little about how he would handle the conflict.

After The New York Times highlighted Trump’s silence, he broadly addressed it.

“You’ve got to finish the problem,” Trump said on Fox News on March 5, but did not offer specifics on what that would entail. Over the weekend, Trump said that if he were elected in November he would tell Netanyahu “you have to finish it up, and do it quickly and get back to the world of peace.” The U.S. has been in prolonged talks with both sides over an extended cease-fire, which has yet to materialize.

Trump has not said how hostage negotiations should be handled or how to relieve the humanitarian crisis involving Gaza’s civilian population. His campaign did not respond to those specific policy questions.

On Tuesday, Trump went further on the issue than he has to date. During an interview on WABC, host Sid Rosenberg noted reports that Biden would not help fund Israel’s efforts if it went into Rafah.

“Trump would be giving Bibi Netanyahu everything he needs,” Rosenberg said. “Is that not fair to assume?”

“100%” Trump responded.

Trump then quickly turned to the subject of the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal and how his pulling out of it would have slashed funds to Iran, which has backed Hamas, and therefore the conflict wouldn’t have happened. Trump has repeatedly touted that policy under his watch, and his campaign Tuesday said if Trump is re-elected, “Iran will go back to being broke.”

Trump has lambasted Biden over his handling of the Israel-Gaza war and largely stood back and watched his Democratic counterpart take hits from intraparty criticism over the issue.

“It’s very surprising that a serious candidate for president would say so little about something this important,” said Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, who is now a Trump critic. “He doesn’t know what to say. He has not thought this overall circumstance beginning on Oct. 7 through, and he knows he has to say something, so he responds with platitudes and he’s a foot wide and an inch deep.”

Bolton described Trump’s most recent comments as vague enough that they could mean different things to different interests.

"Democrats are committing political suicide over this, and Trump can say things that allow people to read into it whatever they want,” Bolton said.

On Monday, Trump attacked Jews who voted for Democrats, echoing a trope that American Jews have split loyalties to the U.S. and Israel.

“Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion,” Trump said in an interview with Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump administration official, on Gorka’s web show. “They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves, because Israel will be destroyed.”

Republican strategist Brendan Steinhauser said that, regarding Israel, Republicans are confident in Trump because of his actions in office, including moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

“What he says and what he tweets, that’s one thing — but if you look at what he did, his administration was actually tougher,” Steinhauser said.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., said he supported some of Trump’s past policies, like moving the embassy and the Abraham Accords. But the congressman was critical of Trump for staying on the sidelines for the most part since Oct. 7, asking why Trump didn’t push Republicans in Congress to back aid for Israel or take other public actions to buttress Israel’s position.

Trump has provided “no leadership from the outside,” he said.

The Republican Jewish Coalition, however, has fully embraced Trump. In its endorsement this month, the group said it leaned heavily on “historic policy accomplishments, which strengthened the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

Ukraine

President Biden is locked in a protracted battle with Republicans over extending funding to Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia, long arguing that protecting Ukraine is imperative to protecting democracy and keeping more conflicts from erupting worldwide.

Trump, who has built much of his brand on the “America First” label, has helped lead his party in obstructing that funding.

Like with Israel, Trump offers the unprovable contention that the Ukraine conflict would not have happened were he in office. In stump speeches, he makes the lofty pronouncement that he would peacefully end the war within 24 hours, meeting with Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy and striking a deal.

“It’s totally unrealistic to think you could solve it in 24 hours,” Bolton said. “And he’s also said he could get Zelenskyy and Putin in a room together and solve it. And that’s not going to happen either.”

The Trump campaign has not said what Trump would offer to end the war, though he once backed turning over parts of Ukraine to Putin in a peace deal.

Trump on occasion has indicated that Russia is not as much of a threat as Democrats would portray it.

In a campaign video entitled “Preventing World War III,” Trump argues that continuing the Ukraine “proxy battle” only risks global war. The video is part of an "Agenda 47" series that the campaign has recorded with what it has pointed to as more detailed policy stances from Trump.

“Our foreign policy establishment keeps trying to pull the world into conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia based on the lie that Russia represents our greatest threat,” Trump said on the video. “But the greatest threat to Western Civilization today is not Russia. It’s probably, more than anything else, ourselves and some of the horrible, U.S.A. hating people that represent us.”

Separately, he raised the possibility that he’d encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” against NATO countries who don’t pay enough for defense.

In mid-February, Trump took a 180-degree turn and claimed he was the one who would protect Ukraine and accused Biden of ceding Ukraine to Putin.

But then, another turn. Earlier this month, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said Trump told him during a meeting at Mar-a-Lago he would “not give a penny” to Ukraine if elected. Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on that contention.

On Tuesday, Trump in an interview said he would support NATO as long as countries pay their “fair share.”

“President Trump has repeatedly stated that a top priority in his second term will be to quickly negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war,” Leavitt, the Trump campaign spokesperson, said. “Also, President Trump believes European nations should be paying more of the cost of the conflict, as the U.S. has paid significantly more, which is not fair to our taxpayers,” she added.

“He will do what is necessary to restore peace and rebuild American strength and deterrence on the world stage, and he is the only person who can make that happen.”

Murray, the pollster, noted that so far, more than 50% of the electorate is sticking with Trump.

“A significant chunk of his support is coming from people who just feel insecure — they feel that the world is changing too quickly around them,” Murray said. “They want somebody who can articulate who’s to blame for them feeling how they feel, and it doesn’t matter if they have real solutions. And that’s why Trump does not need to really articulate a platform because those people don’t need a platform.”

Social Security

In 2023, Trump voiced stern opposition to trimming Social Security.

“Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security,” Trump said in a video message posted to social media.

But last week, in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Trump had a different message.

“So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting,” Trump said. “And in terms of, also, the theft and the bad management of entitlements — tremendous bad management of entitlements — there’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do.”

Trump’s campaign said he was talking about cutting waste and then attempted to clear up his remark with a reporter of a conservative publication.

In 2020, however, Trump made a similar comment. When an interviewer asked if entitlement cuts would ever be on his agenda, he responded, “at some point they will be.”

When Trump was president, his administration’s budget proposals included recommended cuts to Social Security.

Experts say Medicare will be insolvent in four years while Social Security is solvent until 2033. Unless revenues are added, benefits will be forcibly cut. Biden’s new budget calls for tax hikes on upper-tiered earners to bridge the gap. Trump hasn’t said how he would address the shortfall, and his campaign did not address that question when asked on Tuesday.

“President Trump delivered on his promise to protect Social Security and Medicare in his first term,” Leavitt said, “and President Trump will continue to strongly protect Social Security and Medicare in his second term."