Donald Trump has a big IVF problem

Donald Trump’s IVF proposal is the ultimate self-own for his campaign.

Donald Trump is desperate. How desperate? Desperate enough to blow up his own coalition and ignite a civil war among his own base. Grab some popcorn. This is going to be a fun one!

IVF has always been a problem for Donald Trump’s campaign and for the Republican party. An overwhelming majority of Americans support it, but the evangelical base that underpins MAGA is staunchly opposed. Trump and Republicans falsely claim to be in favor of IVF until it matters. When a bill supporting IVF came up for a vote in the Senate recently, Republicans, including J.D. Vance, blocked it. Politically, it’s an impossible needle to thread, but that hasn’t stopped Republicans from trying to hoodwink the public about what they actually support.

On Thursday, out of nowhere, Trump decided to up the stakes. He announced a new policy for his campaign. If Trump is elected, he claims that he’ll force insurance companies to pay for IVF treatments or that the government will pay for it. Trump framed it in a way intended to appeal to followers of the false great replacement conspiracy theory, saying, “We wanna produce babies in this country, right?” 

There’s no earthly way Trump could make the government pay for IVF, even if he wanted to. No Republican would vote for it. Trump knows this, but he also knows how underwater he is with women, particularly suburban women. Abortion is a losing issue of titanic proportions for the Republican party (see: midterms, 2022.), but evangelical voters still have a stronghold on the party. 

This is where it gets fun (and weird!) Many of Trump’s Silicon Valley backers, the same ones who foisted J.D. Vance on his campaign, identify as natalists. They have a bizarre obsession with raising the birthrate (and spreading their DNA), and IVF is a tool at their disposal. Elon Musk, a natalist and father of at least 12 children, tweeted, “This is cool” about the policy.

It’s worth noting that many Silicon Valley natalists, as well as Silicon Valley investors generally, have invested heavily in reproductive technologies. And I’ll take it a step further. Trump announced this policy the same week that J.D. Vance publicly asked his Silicon Valley mentor Peter Thiel to “get off the sidelines” and support Trump’s flailing campaign with some cold hard cash. Trump also announced the policy at an event moderated by former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who remains extremely popular with the Silicon Valley crowd.

Watching the various factions of the MAGA movement digest the news and freak out is highly entertaining. The evangelicals aren’t willing to let this slide to gain a Trump win. (Trump’s comments about the Florida abortion ban this week, trying to be too cute by half, didn’t help matters.) They’re mad as hell, and they’re OK with that anger being made public.

The pro-Trump forums and chats have been equally entertaining. It’s a multi-thronged debate between folks who are supportive of IVF (including many who accessed IVF to have their own children) but don’t want the government to pay for treatments, evangelicals who seem to think IVF treatments produce far more discarded embryos than they do, folks who like the proposal but only for straight white nuclear families, and folks who believe some truly weird misinformation about infertility and the resulting children from IVF treatments - including the false belief that the covid vaccine causes infertility. There is 0 consensus in MAGA-land on the issue, and Trump’s surprise proposal has created some interesting rifts. As a parent of two IVF babies myself, I couldn’t help but wonder how Trump supporters who had used IVF to conceive felt when they learned how some of the crazy shit their MAGA buddies believed about them and their children. 

Trump’s IVF proposal is one of his biggest self-owns. It won’t persuade any pro-choice voters, and it brings choice and reproductive freedom back to the forefront of the news cycle. Something his campaign surely doesn’t want. It gives Democrats in the Senate multiple opportunities to put IVF bills (including an existing bill that would force insurance companies to cover fertility treatments.) up for a vote and have Republicans vote them down. Potentially, it will suppress Trump’s evangelical base, who won’t vote for Harris but might feel discouraged enough to stay home on Election Day.

We’ve got 65 days left until the election. If Trump wants to make it about reproductive freedom, I’m all for it. Let's do everything possible to drive that wedge right through the heart of the MAGA coalition. I hope Trump continues to give us opportunities to keep abortion, birth control, and IVF in the headlines. Kamala Harris is ready for that conversation, too.  

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ICYMI

The Election Story Nobody Wants to Talk About (The American Prospect)

Rick Perlstein interviews David Neiwert about the prospect of post-election violence. This is something we cover frequently in CARD, and David has been one of my biggest influences in understanding the Right. If you read one thing this week, it should be this.

Mainstream Media on a Path to Irrelevance (Stop the Presses)

My Courier colleague Mark Jacob takes on legacy media’s complaints about the DNC and the Harris campaign and the ways in which the political press has aided in creating the mess they find themselves in. As someone old enough to remember when the political media complained bitterly about bloggers, I’ve seen the complaints from reporters amusing. Like Mark, I’m not ready to declare legacy media dead, and I have a lot of empathy for reporters and editors whose newsrooms have been gutted. But I’m also frustrated with how the legacy media covers American politics, and I understand why more and more voters are tuning that coverage out in favor of other mediums. 

Harris Campaign Launches WhatsApp Channel Aimed at Bilingual Latino Voters (NBC News)

I love this! It’s always good to see campaigns reaching voters where they are and as the article points out, “WhatsApp is more popular among Hispanics than all other U.S. demographic groups, with 54% of Hispanic adults reporting they use the app.” 

Are Republicans Losing the Culture Wars? (Politico)

Moms For Liberty candidates are flailing at the ballot box, which bodes well for November. As Tim Walz said in his DNC speech, “While other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing hunger from ours.”

Want even more links? Subscribers receive a special ICYMI edition of CARD on Fridays. 

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Coda

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