When asked at Tuesday night’s debate about his various positions on abortion, Donald Trump responded that “what I did is something for 52 years they've been trying — to get Roe v. Wade into the states,” adding that “through the genius and heart and strength of six Supreme Court justices we were able to do that.”

Later, repeating himself and expanding the comment, he said, “Look, this is an issue that’s torn our country apart for 52 years. Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote.“

That’s not true — on the front end or the back end.

Although anti-abortion activists wanted Roe overturned, and while some legal scholars on the left criticized the legal reasoning of Roe, it’s simply not true that everyone was “trying” to get Roe overturned. And, just as importantly, the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision did not simply send the issue “back to the states.”

This is not new for Trump. He regularly turns the Dobbs decision — which overturned the Supreme Court’s ruling that there is a constitutionally protected right to an abortion — into a barrier against any federal action.

Now, it’s true that any legislation or executive action would need to point to federal authority — the Spending Clause, Interstate Commerce Clause, or the like — and that people could challenge any federal policy, but it’s just as true that Dobbs did not address, let alone resolve, any of that.

Despite that, Trump constantly repeats that claim — whether its a lie or confusion matters, but for these purposes, not really — and then builds on it. It’s a false foundation, so everything that follows it is built on quicksand.

“Now, I believe in the exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother,” he insisted. “I believe strongly in it. Ronald Reagan did also. 85% of Republicans do. Exceptions. Very important.”

OK. But that’s irrelevant, even by Trump’s own telling — because his position is that a state can go further than he claims to want and ban abortion completely, with no exceptions.

He admitted as much when he said, “[N]ow states are voting on it. … Now, Ohio, the vote was somewhat liberal. Kansas the vote was somewhat liberal. Much more liberal than people would have thought. But each individual state is voting. It's the vote of the people now. It's not tied up in the federal government. I did a great service in doing it. It took courage to do it. And the Supreme Court had great courage in doing it. And I give tremendous credit to those six justices.”

This was a jumble of everything I explained above. And, it added an another complication, one discussed on Tuesday afternoon at Law Dork: Republican state officials are, increasingly, trying to stop “the vote of the people” — because their votes have unanimously been in support of protecting abortion rights or, at the least, opposing restrictions.

He either just doesn’t understand what is happening, at all, or he’s intentionally lying to people. Either way, it’s not acceptable for someone seeking to be president of the United States.

Of course, in June’s debate, President Joe Biden could not capitalize on that — giving a response that went from lackluster to horrifying as he turned an abortion question, somehow, into an answer about immigration-related crime.

Both Trump and Biden’s comments, though, stood in stark contrast to Harris’s response on Tuesday, which ultimately is so persuasive because it did not conflict with what Trump himself acknowledges — or even takes credit for:

Let's understand how we got here. Donald Trump hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade. And they did exactly as he intended. And now in over 20 states there are Trump abortion bans which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care. In one state it provides prison for life. Trump abortion bans that make no exception even for rape and incest. Which understand what that means. A survivor of a crime, a violation to their body, does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body next. That is immoral. And one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.

Trump has no response to this other than lies or confusion because this is, quite simply, the world he has bragged about making possible.

Trump himself bragged about another ruling that his Supreme Court appointees and the other Republican appointees on the high court brought about, noting of the multiple criminal cases pending against him, “I'm winning most of them and I’ll win the rest on appeal. And you saw that with the decision that came down just recently from the Supreme Court” — a reference to the July immunity decision.

At that, Harris pounced: “Understand what it would mean if Donald Trump were back in the white house with no guardrails. Because certainly, we know now the court won't stop him. We know JD Vance is not going to stop him. It's up to the American people to stop him.”

On that, Harris is undeniably right — on all fronts.