Thursday was a rough day for GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.
At a pre-recorded town hall meeting hosted by MSNBC and Chris Matthews, Trump got tripped up over a question about illegal abortion.
“Should [illegal] abortion be punished?,” Matthews quizzed. “This is not something you can dodge,” he added.
“There has to be some form of punishment,” Trump responded, when pressed.
“For the woman?” Matthews asked, just so there would be no ambiguity.
“Yeah,” Trump responded.
Wrong. Answer.
Anyone watching the clip can clearly see that Matthews was playing “gotcha” (once he established that he was referring to illegal abortions he knew he could pin Trump between having to either say women should be punished or that women could break the law with impunity), but it didn’t matter.
Everyone piled on. Republicans, Democrats, pro-lifers, the pro-choice crowd - everyone.
The kerfuffle came just days after several polls suggested Trump’s favorability among female voters is languishing somewhere in the neighborhood of 25%.
If accurate - and we’re not necessarily saying that it is - Trump may have what we called “a women problem.”
On Thursday, Trump got a little help from the Great America PAC which has released a new 30 second pro-Trump ad in an apparent effort to appeal to suburban female voters. Here’s the clip:
"Sure, I get some grief when I say I'm voting for Donald Trump. But you know what? I want to protect my family," a terrible actress tells the camera. "We need to control our borders and stop letting in dangerous people. Trump will do that. And Ted Cruz? He wanted to let in more Syrian refuges and give amnesty to illegal immigrants. That won't protect my family. Donald Trump will."
There you go. A dangerous man for a "dangerous" world.
In any event, it's somewhat ironic that the ad comes from a PAC which is part of the very same corrupt campaign finance system that Trump has repeatedly called disgusting. Great America is spending "seven-figures" ahead of the Wisconsin primary in an effort to push Trump over the top.
"We have seen such a huge groundswell of Americans that want to help grow the movement around the Trump campaign that we felt compelled to lay the groundwork for the outside effort Republicans will need to win the White House and lengthen Mr. Trump's coattails to protect our majorities in Congress," Jesse Benton, a spokesman for the group said in a statement.
And while Trump may say he has no interest in support from super PACs, something tells us he's ok with anything that makes his "coattails" longer.