Former President Donald Trump's response to a routine policy question Thursday infuriated a Washington Post political analyst who found herself thrown by what one critic dubbed a word salad.
"My job is to analyze policy" Catherine Rampell wrote on X. "I can't even find a complete sentence in this."
"This" was a clip from Trump's question-and-answer session at the Economic Club of New York about a financial burden faced by parents across the U.S.
Reshma Saujani, founder of the nonprofit Girls Who Code and an Economic Club of New York trustee, raised the issue of childcare, which she said cost the U.S. economy more than $142 billion a year and outpaced the cost of inflation.
"One thing that Democrats and Republicans have in common is that both parties talk a lot about what they will do to address the childcare crisis, but neither party has delivered meaningful change," Saujani said.
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"If you win in November, will you commit to prioritizing legislation to make childcare affordable, and if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?"
This precise question was met with a less specific answer from Trump.
"Well, I will do that and we're sitting down, you know, I was, uh, somebody, we had Sen. Marco Rubio and my daughter Ivanka were so, uh, impactful on that issue, it's a very important issue, but I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about that because childcare is childcare is couldn't, you know, is something you have to have it in this country, you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compare to the kind of numbers that I'm talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they're not used to but they'll get used to it very quickly and it's not going to stop them from doing business with us but they'll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we're talking about, including childcare, that it's going to take care. We're going to have, I, I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly very short period of time coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country because I have to stay with childcare, I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I'm talking about, including growth. But growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just, uh, that I just told you about. We're gonna be taking in trillions of dollars and as much as childcare is talked about as being expensive, it's relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we will be taking in. We're gonna make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people and then we'll worry about the rest of the world. Let's help other people. But we're will going to care of our country first, this is about America First. It's about Make America Great Again. We have to do it because right now we're a failing nation. So we'll take care of it."
While conservative Cato Institute economist Ryan Bourne told Rampell he believed Trump was "just saying a decent macroeconomic economy is way more important than having federal childcare policies," former Hillary Clinton campaign organizer Sergio Grant professed himself more critical.
" question about how he would specifically make childcare affordable, he simply spewed some word salad that amounted to 'tariffs will fix everything, believe me,'" Grant wrote. "Then he said he thinks childcare is not really that expensive."
A. J. Delgado, Trump's former campaign adviser and a vocal critic of the former president, chastised the New York Times for coverage of the event she said cleaning up her old boss's "mess."
"My God," she wrote on X. "Watch the MESS of an 'answer' he gives in the video and look how the @NYTimes made it sound halfway coherent."
