How Trump’s ‘woman problem’ has become an election nightmare for the Republicans

The former president – and his appointments to the Supreme Court – ended American women’s constitutional right to have an abortion. Trump used to crow about it, but he now knows it could cost his party dear at the election, writes Jon Sopel

Donald Trump speaks to reporters on the campaign trail this week (EPA)

When Donald Trump speaks, the Republican world listens. Well, it listens until the point where what the former president is saying becomes a heavily tossed word salad, leaving a bewildered autocue operator fumbling about trying to decide where to place the cursor.

But this week Trump did speak, and, because of the importance of the subject and the controversy around it, he stuck rigidly to the lines that had been written.

The subject was abortion, and what should be the way forward nearly two years on from the overturning of Roe v Wade. This huuuuge victory (that is the Trump spelling of the word huge), ending the 50-year-old constitutional right of American women to get an abortion, was down to Trump and the three people he was able to appoint to the Supreme Court.