Former President Donald Trump is clearly frustrated by his poor standing with female voters. We know this not simply because polls show he’s trailing Vice President Kamala Harris by as many as 21 points on the abortion issue and because he’s been working diligently — if not always terribly convincingly — to soften his position on abortion rights but because he’s workshopping new appeals to this segment of the population. On Monday night, the Republican nominee described himself at a rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, as a “protector” of women with this peculiar pitch: a promise that women will feel so safe if he’s returned to the White House that they will no longer “be thinking about abortion.” He also said women would no longer feel “abandoned, lonely or scared.”

Huh?

We might assume the 78-year-old had suffered a momentary brain glitch and somehow linked abortion rights with poverty or inflation or something else, but this doesn’t appear to have been a neural misfire (or perhaps an effort to provide top-flight material to late-night comedians, which, of course, it did). Trump previously posted on his social media site a declaration that a second Trump term will make women “HAPPY, HEALTHY, CONFIDENT AND FREE!” He also assured followers that women will no longer be thinking about abortion because whether it is legal or not will be decided at the state level, presumably because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

In other words, women need not worry their pretty little heads over abortion rights because all that will be decided for them at the state level. And keep in mind this is coming from a man not only chiefly responsible for the overturning of Roe v. Wade but a serial philanderer who was convicted of covering up hush money paid to a porn star and found liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll. And that’s not even mentioning his sometimes crude sexual attacks against his political opponents. Last month, he reposted photos on his social media platform suggesting Harris had done sexual favors to advance her career.

It’s understandable that Trump is frustrated by how Dobbs has not been well-received by Americans who value women’s reproductive rights. Polls suggest a majority of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Indeed, the number has even increased slightly post-Dobbs to 63%, according to the Pew Research Center. Republicans generally oppose abortion rights (by a 57%-41% margin), but Democrats are far more unified, with a whopping 85% favoring abortion rights, according to Pew. So you can see the man’s dilemma as he tries to woo non-GOP voters in swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and so on. How do you soften the record?

That’s why he’s previously offered the fiction that even liberals wanted abortion rights handed over to the states (they didn’t) or that “every legal scholar” agrees with the Supreme Court majority in Dobbs (they don’t). When a candidate who once marveled to an “Access Hollywood” reporter how he could grab women sexually without permission (a moment captured on video in 2005 briefly highlighted in the 2016 race against Hillary Clinton) tries to reverse himself on an issue that’s clearly hurting him badly, you just know the effort is going to be ludicrous.

Every time Trump tries to explain himself or change the narrative or find some way to make it sound like he’s a moderate when it comes to women’s rights, he inevitably starts to sound misogynistic. So now women are supposed to be happy not thinking about abortion? Is he trying to say they’ll all be carrying unwanted, potentially risky pregnancies to term, even if it means they are more likely to die (as studies show abortion bans inevitably raise maternal mortality)?

We seriously doubt that most voters of any gender will view Trump as a protector of women. But in a tight contest where a handful of swing states will make a difference, it’s always possible that Trump will find a hustle, whether it involves Haitians eating pets or women happy to let individual states decide what they can do with their bodies. Never mind that it’s false. Never mind that it’s ridiculous. He doesn’t need to fool all the people all the time, just enough.