Some anti-Trumpers are reacting to this by grumbling that he polarizes everything he touches and thus would be better off leaving this attack to others. Eh. Trump riffing off-the-cuff about abortion would carry some risk but he’s never more on-script than he is at the SOTU. And besides, one of the glaring realities of the coverage of Ralph Northam’s infanticidal mumblings is that there … just hasn’t been much coverage. Big media goes into suppression mode whenever abortion news breaks that’s unhelpful to The Cause. To the extent that they do cover it, you’re apt to see self-parodic headlines like this:

You know it’s serious when righties have shifted from “pouncing” to “seizing.” Soon we’ll be at the dreaded “capitalizing on” stage.

If you want to break through the media blackout and force congressional Democrats to stop pretending they’ve never heard of Ralph Northam or Andrew Cuomo, nothing would do it quite like the president roundhousing them in front of 40 million people. Which raises the question: How specific will Trump’s comments be? Will he refer to Northam and Cuomo by name and address the specifics of the Virginia and New York bills or will this be more of a check-the-box “we believe in a culture of life” affirmation?

President Donald Trump is telling conservative allies he wants to incorporate firm anti-abortion language into his State of the Union address Tuesday, and potentially include an anti-abortion figure among his list of invitees, according to four sources familiar with his plans

Trump sees an opening to energize his evangelical supporters and capture moderate voters who administration officials believe may be turned off by widespread coverage of New York’s newest abortion law, which allows for termination of some pregnancies after the 24-week mark for health reasons…

“The legislation in New York and Virginia is really forcing his hand and he’s reacting to people who have just gone off the rails. I don’t think he’s going to mention it for political reasons because I don’t think it will help him much politically,” [Jerry] Falwell [Jr] said. “I think he’s doing it because he really believes it’s important to protect life.”

Politico says it’s not clear if he’ll mention the VA or NY laws and sources say it’s unlikely that he’ll call Northam out by name. Another source tells them that Trump doesn’t want his speech to be “all fire and brimstone” about his various policy disagreements with Democrats, which also suggests his abortion rhetoric will be low-key. I don’t know, man. Rarely do you hear me call for Trump to be more pugnacious in his public comments, but if ever the moment called for it, this is it. The public is firmly on his side in opposing late-term abortion. There’s really no reason to hold back.

Especially since, allegedly, he’s planning some sort of “warm and fuzzy” olive branch towards Pelosi and Democrats during the speech. That’s standard-issue SOTU stuff, as is Trump’s apparent desire to “project a message of unity.” But it’s jarringly discordant with this political moment. The country is not unified; we just finished up a month-long shutdown that underlined that disunity; we’re staring down the barrel of one of the nastiest presidential elections in American history; and the lead news story right now among activists in the president’s party has to do with Democrats contemplating post-birth abortion, i.e. murder. Pelosi, the target of Trump’s olive branch, took every opportunity she had during the shutdown to casually demean him. Meanwhile, Trump’s entire brand is being plain-spoken, the guy who “tells it like it is” while establishmentarians of both parties blandly gladhand each other.

I’m not asking him to go up there and start riffing on new nicknames for Pelosi. The occasion does call for decorum. But he can be decorous and still lay the Democrats out on late-term abortion. They richly deserve it. Lower the boom.

Here’s Virginia’s pro-infanticide governor yesterday insisting he has nothing to apologize for.