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TRUMP AND THE ROE DECISION.There's a debate among some on the right about former President Donald Trump and the Supreme Court's decision to strike down Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Does Trump deserve any credit for what happened?

Some anti-Trump voices say the answer is no. "Am I glad to see Roe gone?" asked National Review's Kevin D. Williamson in a recent article. "Absolutely. Do I think that Trump's role in this could have been performed by a reasonably well-trained monkey? Absolutely." Williamson went on to write that "no conservative who knows how to read supported Trump in 2016 because he was solid on judicial originalism," arguing instead that "it was movement conservatism ... that kept the Trump presidency from being a disaster for the right."

Williamson is an extreme case he likes to call Trump a monkey. But other, less strident anti-Trump voices have also tried to minimize Trump's contributions. So what is the reality? Does Trump, in fact, deserve some credit for the overturn of Roe? The answer is absolutely yes.

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The critics point out that Trump was pro-choice for most of his life. Indeed he was. When conservative pro-lifers were laboring to defeat Roe in the 1980s and 1990s and 2000s, Trump was nowhere to be found. But when he ran for president in 2016, Trump proclaimed himself pro-life. Did he really mean it? Had he undergone some profound conversion? Or did he simply realize that he needed pro-life support to win the Republican nomination and then GOP votes in the general election?

Answer that with a question: Does it really matter? Whatever he truly believed, if anything, Trump pledged to appoint pro-life judges, which for decades was the most important promise a Republican presidential candidate could make to the pro-life world. He was quite explicit about it. In his final debate with Hillary Clinton, on Oct. 19, 2016, Trump, ever the salesman, outlined a scenario that sounds quite familiar today.

The discussion began when moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump, "Do you want the court, including the justices that you will name, to overturn Roe v. Wade, which includes, in fact, states, a woman's right to an abortion?"

"Well, if that would happen, because I am pro-life and I will be appointing pro-life judges, I would think that that will go back to the individual states," Trump answered. "If they overturned it, it will go back to the states."

"But what I'm asking you, sir," Wallace responded, "is do you want to see the court overturn you just said you want to see the court protect the Second Amendment. Do you want to see the court overturn Roe v. Wade?

Trump's answer: "Well, if we put another two or perhaps three justices on, that's really what's going to be that will happen. And that will happen automatically, in my opinion, because I am putting pro-life justices on the court. I will say this: It will go back to the states, and the states will then make a determination."

It was music to pro-life ears. Did Trump feel it in his heart? No one cared. Pro-lifers had experienced so much disappointment in the past that their only real question was: Will he really do it?

To establish his credibility, especially since he had never run for office before, Trump went to the nation's premier conservative legal organization, the Federalist Society, for advice. Actually, more than that. Trump in effect farmed out the choice of judicial nominees to the group, which was happy to have more influence with a presidential candidate than it ever had.

Remember that in the 2016 campaign there was an empty Supreme Court seat, courtesy of Mitch McConnell (R-KY), then the Senate majority leader. Justice Antonin Scalia had died suddenly in February 2016, and McConnell outraged Democrats by holding the court seat open throughout 2016, on the grounds that since one party held the White House and the other party held the Senate, it should be left to the voters to choose the president to make the next nomination. So the campaign was held in the context of an open court seat.

Trump's campaign gambit, introduced in May 2016, was to produce a Federalist Society-vetted list of judges and lawyers and promise that he would pick a court nominee from that list. The first list had 11 names, and then in September 2016, Trump expanded it to 21 names. Trump's promise was explicit: I will pick my Supreme Court nominees from this list. All were solid conservatives.

So that was the campaign. Here's the remarkable part, from the pro-lifers' perspective: When Trump was elected, he kept his promise. He started with Neil Gorsuch, who became Justice Neil Gorsuch. Then he added a few names to the list, including Brett Kavanaugh.

Pro-lifers were cautiously delighted when Trump nominated Kavanaugh to fill the seat of the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. Democrats were enraged. And then, when Democrats and allies on the Left launched an all-out attack on Kavanaugh, Trump stuck by his nominee. The attack came in the form of uncorroborated allegations of sexual assault 35 years earlier, when Kavanaugh was in high school. There was never a bit of proof that it ever happened. And then came progressively wilder allegations as Democrats launched a desperate attempt to smear Kavanaugh.

Trump stood behind Kavanaugh. This is fromJustice on Trial, the definitive account of the nomination battle by Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino:

Everyone, including the president, wanted to fight back on every front, including the media, in the committee, and with a hearing. Nobody considered withdrawing the nomination. They knew they might not win in the midst of a #MeToo media frenzy, but they would go down fighting. President Trump's eagerness to fight had previously irritated Republican leaders, but now even they were thankful for it. Other Republican presidents might not have shown the same fortitude.

Another GOP president might have sent Kavanaugh a lovely handwritten note thanking him for his willingness to serve but informing him that the administration would have to go in a new direction. Instead, Trump fought. And in the Kavanaugh confirmation, Trump earned the loyalty of many, many pro-lifers. He then strengthened the bond with the Amy Coney Barrett nomination, pushed through, by McConnell, again, in the final days of the 2020 campaign. (McConnell argued that it was OK to make such a late-term confirmation because both the White House and Senate were controlled by the same party.)

A simple recounting of what Trump did with his Supreme Court nominees is enough to undercut the ad hominem anti-Trump arguments. It in no way suggests Trump deserves exclusive credit for overturning Roe. Pro-life conservatives had labored for decades to make that happen. It was a big movement that suffered setbacks and kept going. Many people, including politicians, lawyers, activists, religious leaders, and others, contributed.

But the fact is, Trump contributed, too. Indeed, it would not be too much to say that he was essential to getting the anti-Roe campaign over the finish line.

For a deeper dive into many of the topics covered in the Daily Memo, please listen to my podcast, The Byron York Show available on the Ricochet Audio Network and everywhere else podcasts can be found. You can use this link to subscribe.

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Trump and the Roe decision - Washington Examiner