WorldNetDaily is such a group of simps for Donald Trump that it will even give him a pass for abandoning right-wing extremism on abortion — it has cheered one anti-abortion activist for buying into Trump’s moderation, and columnist Michael Brown punted on the issue and refused to criticize Trump’s moderation. (On the other hand, WND published a column by an anti-abortion extremist claiming that the assassination attempt against Trump occurred because he “abandoned, some would say ‘betrayed,’ the pro-life cause.”)
The dominant vibe, however, is hypocrisy. In that spirit, David Kupelian spent an Oct. 8 column lashing out at anti-abortion activist Lila Rose for staying ideologically consistent on the issue:
Dear Lila,
We’ve never personally met, but as a pro-life journalist I’ve appreciated your activism since way back when you were a teenager doing awesome hidden-camera sting operations with James O’Keefe. Here at WorldNetDaily we’ve highlighted your work for many years. My wife and I support Live Action. Enough said.
As for me, my main pro-life contribution has been exposing how legalized abortion was sold to a largely Christian America decades ago, starting with my 1991 interview with Bernard Nathanson (during which the repentant former top abortionist revealed all the lies and marketing techniques they employed), and then later in much greater detail in my book, “The Marketing of Evil.”
But Lila, we need to talk.
Recently, expressing your disappointment in Donald Trump’s current stance on abortion (essentially, he says each state should determine its own abortion laws, plus, whether wise or not, he has strategically moderated his prior abortion positions because he thinks it will help him win a very tight and all-important election) you declared, “I think that it’s the job of the pro-life movement to demand protection for pre-born lives. It is not the job of the pro-life movement to vote for President Trump.”
You added, “If the election were today, I would not vote for Harris or Trump based on their policies and their statements and their positions.”
Please allow me to explain why I believe you’re wrong on this point. Perhaps catastrophically wrong.
Kupelian then went into lecture mode, touting how Roe v. Wade was overturned under Trump and proposed other actions designed to boost the anti-abortion cause, while hyperbolically attacking the abortion stance of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz:
Considering Harris’ and Walz’ abortion advocacy from within a religious framework, it’s clear that their giddy obsession with, and open glorification of, sacrificing beautiful unborn children can reasonably be called satanic. For America to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz – knowing what they stand for – would be to spit in God’s face.
More attempted shaming followed:
Please also consider a couple of unchangeable facts:
1. By all accounts, November’s election will be very close, which means every vote counts.
2. If a registered voter decides not to vote, or to write in someone else’s name on their ballot, he or she is voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. The math is simple and inescapable: Not voting for Trump is mathematically identical to voting for Harris when the ballots are counted. The candidate with the most votes wins and takes over the country.
But Kupelian never responded to Rose’s main concern — that there’s no reason to believe that Trump is “secretly pro-life” giving how he forced the Republicans to moderate on abortion, as also stated in the article Kupelian is critiquing:
I’ve received no confirmation from the Trump campaign that they’re going to secretly lie about abortion and then go do pro-life things afterward. I think that’s a narrative that there’s no proof to back up. And I think that if he actually is secretly pro-life and he’s just doing this to win both — I think it’s morally wrong and it’s extremely misguided politically.
He’s alienating his base. Kamala Harris spent a whole week at the DNC rallying her pro-abortion base. Abortion was a headline issue at the DNC, and Trump’s response to that is saying, “Well, I guess I’m going to alienate my base.” He’s not getting Kamala’s base.
[…]They have not told me, “Oh, we’re lying with our public statements, and we’re actually going to go back on our public statements and do otherwise in our administration.”
I think this is a foolish narrative to say Trump is just going to lie, say pro-abortion things, secretly somehow get the pro-abortion vote, then he’s going to be in office and then he’s going to do pro-life things. I don’t think there’s any evidence to back that up.
[…]If you look at the 2016 campaign, he was much more vocally pro-life than he is now, and he had more public promises to do pro-life advocacy. Now he’s changed his position. And he is not only not saying pro-life things — he’s actively saying he would support pro-abortion policy. That’s a very important distinction, and no amount of “Well, it’s just politics” cover up that fact. Vance has come out and said that [Trump] would veto an abortion ban, that he supports abortion pills, that he supports “reproductive rights” without clarifying what that means. [Trump] was behind the RNC platform being weakened on this, which for four decades was strong on life, and now it’s been weakened.
Don’t get me wrong — I would love to see Trump coming out standing strong with life and say, “I’m going to fight for life” [with] a strong pro-life message. I would love to see him stop saying this nonsense about supporting abortion. But unfortunately, that’s not the case.
Rather than honestly have that discussion, Kupelian continued to lecture:
One last point: These are not normal times. This is not an era when one can reasonably greet defeat by saying, “Oh well, so the Democrats won this time, that’ll teach the Republicans to be more diligent in their pro-life walk the next time.” There may be no next time, as many of today’s best historians and analysts are currently warning. If Trump loses, this could be the last genuine election America ever has.
Also, Lila, even if – as I suspect – you regard your public statements (“If the election were today, I would not vote for Harris or Trump”) as strategic, a form of leverage you hope will influence Trump to publicly adopt more purely and explicitly pro-life positions prior to the election, you’re still making a huge mistake: You’re an influential pro-life leader and many people will follow your lead and not vote for Donald Trump, which will constitute de facto electoral support for Kamala Harris.
I’ll end with a prediction. And I say this with genuine, heartfelt love and respect for the pro-life movement, of which I have been a part for close to five decades: If you fail to vote for Trump and advocate that others do likewise, and he loses, you will come to bitterly regret it for the rest of your life. I would rather spare you that personal agony – in addition to the greater agony of unwittingly contributing to the demise (or as Obama put it, “the fundamental transformation”) of the nation you obviously love.
That’s not “genuine, heartfelt love and respect” — that’s emotional blackmail. Kupelian is angry that Rose has principles she has refused to compromise on, as opposed to his own total abandonment of his previous self-proclaimed sense of morality to tie himself to Trump, done in no small part to help preserve his job as a purveyor of fake news (since neither Trump nor WND care much about the truth). Kupelian has sold out for a felon, rapist and adulterer, and he can’t understand why others won’t do the same.
Kupelian closed by demanding that Rose “rethink your public position on this election and voice your support for the president who, by God’s grace, finally accomplished the first of the pro-life movement’s two greatest goals.” Given that Trump has yet to offer any public reassurances he really is an anti-abortion extremist, there’s no reason why Rose should do so in the face of Kupelian’s emotional blackmail. And just to show how much Kupelian is invested in this, a link to his column has remained on WND’s front page ever since.