Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki couldn’t seem to wrap her head around a stunning new poll that shows Americans are not overwhelmingly blaming former President Donald Trump over an abortion issue.
On Monday, the host of MSNBC’s “Inside With Jen Psaki” asked her guest, the new president of EMILYs List Jessica Mackler to “help walk our viewers off the ledge” after sharing that Trump is not being blamed for the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022 despite appointing three of the high court’s nine justices during his White House tenure.
Psaki seemed rattled by numbers in a new CBS News poll which noted that a majority of those surveyed “think the overturning of Roe was bad for the country, but far fewer blame Trump for it.”
“You know so much about research, politics, polling on this. You’re going to help walk our viewers off the ledge,” Psaki told Mackler on Monday’s show. “Because there’s been a lot of polls lately on abortion rights that are surprising, I think, to a lot of people, including me.”
“I’m here for you,” Mackler responded.
“In a recent CBS poll, only 33 percent blame Trump for Roe being overturned. But nearly half of voters polled say they neither give him credit nor blame him for overturning Roe. What — that is such a key issue,” she added before peppering her guest with questions.
“What do you do about that? Do you believe those numbers? And what do you do about that?” she wondered.
“Yes, well, I mean, I think you said this earlier, right? So, first, these polls are a snapshot in time. And it’s early,” Mackler said, trying to downplay the results.
“For those of us who live and breathe this every day, you know, it’s hard to remember, but voters are just keying into this. They’re not really going to key in until much later. So that’s one thing,” she contended.
“But I think the most important thing is that we have to put this in front of voters. Donald Trump has said on camera that he has — he has taken responsibility for overturning Roe v. Wade. He has said that he will adopt a national abortion ban,” Mackler continued.
“And so it’s on EMILY’s List to make sure that we’re putting that in front of voters every single day between now and Election Day, showing them the tape and making sure that we’re consistently delivering this message,” she added referring to the political action committee that says on its website that it works “to elect Democratic pro-choice women up and down the ballot and across the country.”
“And what we have seen over the past several years is that, when we do that, it really works,” Mackler told Psaki.
“Show them the tape,” Psaki echoed. “That’s good! We need T-shirts.”
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida. Powers also contributes to BizPac Review.
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