Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, October nine. Peter Dutton says the Prime Minister
Speaker 1: is speaking out of both sides of his mouth on
Speaker 1: conflict in the Middle East. That's after Parliament failed to
Speaker 1: muster bipartisan support for emotion honoring victims of Hermas's twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three attack on Israel. A secret report says a
Speaker 1: powerful union leader was ousted by members who fabricated sexual
Speaker 1: assault allegations against him. That exclusive story is live right
Speaker 1: now at the Australian dot Com dot a U. It's
Speaker 1: the election issue everyone's talking about, and abortion is threatening
Speaker 1: to define the White House run of Republican VP nominee jd. Vance.
Speaker 1: In today's episode, our Washington DC correspondent gets up close
Speaker 1: and personal with the combative, enigmatic senator with big ambitions.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty two, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe
Speaker 1: versus Wade. That was a nineteen seventy three decision by
Speaker 1: the same court that had become part of America's legal fabric,
Speaker 1: the idea that the Constitution of the United States contained
Speaker 1: a right to abortion. The twenty twenty two decision was
Speaker 1: made by a five to four majority of the court's justices.
Speaker 1: Those included three judges appointed by former President Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: There was jubilation, did not enjoy that it was fine,
Speaker 1: return determination of feeling determination battle is not over, and
Speaker 1: devastation and feels like convey doesn't love me in Momai.
Speaker 1: As a way, the twenty twenty two decision didn't ban abortion.
Speaker 1: It handed authority back to the states, meaning it's now
Speaker 1: up to individual states to decide if and how women
Speaker 1: can terminate pregnancies. Some states, like Texas, Oklahoma, and South
Speaker 1: Dakota made seeking or administering abortions a criminal offense, with
Speaker 1: few exceptions for protection of the life of the mother.
Speaker 1: Others like New York, Oregon, and California moved swiftly to
Speaker 1: protect and even expand abortion access.
Speaker 2: So you'll often see in polls of key issues that
Speaker 2: abortion is oftentimes within the top ten issues of importance
Speaker 2: to American voters. Now, I think that's very unlikely to
Speaker 2: be the case in Australia.
Speaker 1: Claire Joe Kelly is The Australian's correspondent in Washington, DC.
Speaker 2: We tend to think that Australia and America are similar
Speaker 2: most of the time. They are actually significant and important
Speaker 2: differences between us and I think this is one of
Speaker 2: the Kamala Harris has pledged to en trying the protections
Speaker 2: of Roe versus Way in federal law, and the Trump
Speaker 2: position is to essentially let abortion become a federal issue
Speaker 2: and the states will determine their own positions on abortion.
Speaker 1: Back in twenty twenty two, when the Supreme Court made
Speaker 1: this decision to overturn Roe versus Wade, Donald Trump seemed
Speaker 1: to be pretty clear, and he was at the beginning
Speaker 1: of his election campaign too, that this was the result
Speaker 1: of the appointments that he made. He appointed conservative judges
Speaker 1: knowing that this was their opinion.
Speaker 3: Well, I did something that nobody know as possible. I
Speaker 3: got rid of Roe v.
Speaker 4: Wed.
Speaker 3: And by doing that he seems to be.
Speaker 1: Walked back from that a little bit now. Is that
Speaker 1: you're a reading of it too.
Speaker 3: This is an issue that's torn our country apart for
Speaker 3: fifty two years. Every legal scholar, every Demo create, every Republican,
Speaker 3: liberal conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought
Speaker 3: back to the states where the people could vote. And
Speaker 3: that's what happened. It's the vote of the people now
Speaker 3: it's not tied up in the federal government.
Speaker 2: I think Donald Trump wants to ensure that he's got
Speaker 2: a broad appeal. What he is saying is that it
Speaker 2: is a fair position to let this issue be determined
Speaker 2: by the states.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the problems.
Speaker 2: Is if you have a situation where important positions, essentially
Speaker 2: policy decisions are effectively being implemented by way of court decisions,
Speaker 2: because it's always open to the court to change its position.
Speaker 2: I think he's embracing that position to try and ensure
Speaker 2: that the Republicans don't scare people on this issue. And
Speaker 2: that was one of the points that jd Vance made
Speaker 2: in that vice presidential debate where he actually said that
Speaker 2: the Republicans had mishandled this issue in the past.
Speaker 5: As a Republican who he proudly wants to protect innocent
Speaker 5: life in this country, who proudly wants to protect the vulnerable,
Speaker 5: is that my party, We've got to do so much
Speaker 5: better of a job at earning the American people's trust
Speaker 5: back on this issue where they frankly just don't trust us.
Speaker 5: And I think that's one of the things that Donald
Speaker 5: Trump and I are endeavoring to do.
Speaker 2: That was a major concession that he made Claire, and
Speaker 2: he said that the Republicans needed to win back people's
Speaker 2: trust on this issue. So this is the formula that
Speaker 2: they've arrived at to try and achieve that.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's running mate JD. Vance was in August adamant.
Speaker 1: Trump was not seeking a national ban, so he had
Speaker 1: veto a federal abortion ban. I think he would.
Speaker 5: He said that explicitly that he would.
Speaker 1: Last week in a debate with the Democratic rival Tim Walls,
Speaker 1: Vance towed the party line.
Speaker 5: And the proper way to handle this, as messy as
Speaker 5: democracy sometimes is, is to let voters make these Decisionsans
Speaker 5: and JD.
Speaker 1: Vance says his own position on abortion supportive of type restrictions.
Speaker 1: After fifteen weeks gestation has evolved following a vote in
Speaker 1: his home state, and.
Speaker 5: The people of Ohio voted overwhelmingly, by the way, against
Speaker 5: my position. And I think that what I learned from that, Nora,
Speaker 5: is that we've got to do a better job at
Speaker 5: winning back people's trust.
Speaker 1: But in recent days Vance went off script, apparently revealing
Speaker 1: the Republicans would defund Planned Parenthood. That's a national provider
Speaker 1: of reproductive healthcare. Contraception counseling, and in some cases abortions.
Speaker 5: Look, I mean, our view is we don't think that
Speaker 5: taxpayers should fund late term abortions. That has been a
Speaker 5: consistent view of the Drop campaign the first time around.
Speaker 5: It will remain a consistent view.
Speaker 1: There's hyperbole on both sides of this debate. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: has suggested the Democrats want to kill babies.
Speaker 3: Her vice presidential says abortion in the ninth month is
Speaker 3: absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth, it's an execution,
Speaker 3: no longer abortion because the baby is born is okay.
Speaker 1: And Kamala Harris paints Trump as a misogynist.
Speaker 6: So he who when he was president hands selected three
Speaker 6: members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention
Speaker 6: that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade,
Speaker 6: and they did just as he intended. This is the
Speaker 6: same guy who said that women should be punished for
Speaker 6: having abortions. This is the same guy who uses the
Speaker 6: kind of language he does to describe women.
Speaker 1: It's about women, too, isn't it, Joe. It seems to
Speaker 1: me that the Democrats really think that this is going
Speaker 1: to be the thing that gets women out to vote yes.
Speaker 2: And they keep arguing that the real position of the
Speaker 2: Republicans is for a national ban on abortion. So that's
Speaker 2: the argument. They're saying that you can't trust the Republicans
Speaker 2: on this issue. You can't trust Donald Trump. And indeed
Speaker 2: jd Vance has somewhat softened his position himself on abortion
Speaker 2: over the years, like he has on many issues.
Speaker 1: Claire coming up, how jd Vance has become the most
Speaker 1: interesting player in this race. Joe Kelly went along to
Speaker 1: a jd Van speech on Tuesday at a rally to
Speaker 1: honor Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna get a little political here. It is disgraceful
Speaker 4: that we have an American president and vice president who
Speaker 4: haven't done a thing. Vice President Harris our messages, bring
Speaker 4: them home, use your authority to help bring them home.
Speaker 1: We can do it. We just need real leadership. What's
Speaker 1: your sense of him up close?
Speaker 2: I think he's very articulate. He has a sense of
Speaker 2: easy charisma. I think that he's persuasive. He presents well,
Speaker 2: but while he's strong in presentation, he's untested in substance.
Speaker 2: I think essentially what Donald Trump sees in jd Vance
Speaker 2: has given jd Vance's age. He's so young, at just
Speaker 2: forty years old. I think he sees someone who will
Speaker 2: be loyal to him and who could potentially carry the
Speaker 2: trump Ism torch, if you like, into the future and
Speaker 2: act as a pillar of resistance against the old Republican
Speaker 2: establishment in the years to come. And the criticism of JD.
Speaker 2: Vans that's been made by Joe Biden and the Democrats
Speaker 2: is that he is a clone of Donald Trump. And
Speaker 2: I think you can see that pushback from the old
Speaker 2: Republican establishment. You see it in the fact that Liz
Speaker 2: Cheney is campaigning with Kamala Harris at the moment, Dick
Speaker 2: Cheney does not support Donald Trump, and George W. Bush
Speaker 2: is not saying how he will vote.
Speaker 1: He's, of course, famously the never Trumper. He once compared
Speaker 1: Trump to Hitler. Now he says that he was mistaken
Speaker 1: then and that actually now this is the real JD.
Speaker 1: Vance and he's come to realize that Donald Trump was
Speaker 1: unfairly misrepresented and he's actually much more of a genius
Speaker 1: than anyone expected.
Speaker 5: I was wrong about Donald Trump. I was wrong, first
Speaker 5: of all because I believed some of the media stories
Speaker 5: that turned out to be dinnisionist fabrications of his record,
Speaker 5: but most importantly, Donald Trump delivered for the American people.
Speaker 1: He's in a tough position, isn't he, Joe. He's got
Speaker 1: to step his way through things that Trump is very
Speaker 1: passionate about, like, for example, the result of the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty election, keeping him on side while also not appearing foolish.
Speaker 2: Essentially, there are two JD. Van, says Claire. So there's
Speaker 2: the JD. Vance, who is the exemplification of us exceptalism.
Speaker 2: He embodies the story of the American dream, pulling yourself
Speaker 2: up by your own bootstraps, growing up in poverty in
Speaker 2: rural Ohio, his mother struggling with drugs, enlisting in the Marines,
Speaker 2: going on to attend Yale where he did law, becoming
Speaker 2: a venture capitalist, and then obviously penning that best selling
Speaker 2: memoir back in twenty sixteen. So there's that version of JD.
Speaker 5: Vans.
Speaker 2: And then on the other side there's the criticism. There's
Speaker 2: the idea that JD. Vans is a political chameleon, that
Speaker 2: he's an opportunist, that he does what he needs to
Speaker 2: do to get ahead, transforming from the never Trumper that
Speaker 2: he was in twenty sixteen when he was releasing that
Speaker 2: best selling memoir and becoming a Trump loyalist. So apparently
Speaker 2: this all changed in about February twenty twenty one when
Speaker 2: he had a meeting with Trump at Mari Lago in Florida.
Speaker 2: So there are reports that at that point he apologized
Speaker 2: to Try, claiming he had brought into a narrative that
Speaker 2: had been spread by the mainstream media. So now he
Speaker 2: finds himself in this position where he has to be
Speaker 2: sympathetic to the core tenets of Trumpism. So this relates
Speaker 2: to things like the twenty twenty election being stolen. He
Speaker 2: has endorsed the idea there was widespread fraud, that there
Speaker 2: were people voting illegally, And he's also a taken aim
Speaker 2: at Mike Pence, suggesting that he wouldn't have certified the
Speaker 2: vote back in January twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: Did he lose the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 5: Tim, I'm focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor
Speaker 5: Americans from speaking their mind and the wake of the
Speaker 5: twenty twenty COVID situation?
Speaker 1: That is a damning non answer.
Speaker 5: It's a damning non answer for you to not talk
Speaker 5: about censorship.
Speaker 2: So he's had this unbelievable transformation into a maga populist.
Speaker 1: Joe Kelly is the Australian's correspondent in Washington DC. You
Speaker 1: can read all his reporting, plus the rest of the
Speaker 1: nation's Best Journalism twenty four seven, at the Australian dot
Speaker 1: com dot u