Image Credits: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg.
In my circles, progressives are getting mighty tired of watching the media presssplain Donald Trump’s gibberish to make it seem less insane. The man is an unhinged dunderhead, and sugarcoating it is a disservice to the American electorate. It’s also unfair because the press didn’t sugarcoat President Joe Biden’s diminished capacity. So, I’m of two minds about Philip Bump’s analysis of Trump’s now viral rambling answer at the Economic Club of New York about how he’d improve access to child care.
First, let’s look at what Trump actually said in its entirety:
Question: “If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable and if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”
Answer: “Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down — you know, I was, uh, somebody, we had Sen. Marco Rubio [(R-Fla.)] and my daughter, Ivanka, was 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 child care is child care. It’s, couldn’t — you know, it’s something, you have to have it. In this country, you have to have it.”
“But when you talk about those numbers compared 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 child care, that it’s gonna take care. We’re gonna have — I, I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time. Coupled with, uh, 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 say with child care, I want to stay with childcare, 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’ll be taking in.”
“We’re going to 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 gonna take 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. Thank you. Very good question.”
What Bump does is put the answer is the fuller context of Trump’s full presentation, which included an emphasis on tariffs and having Elon Musk clean up fraud and waste in federal spending. It’s true that his answer is infintesimally less nonsensical when you know what immediately preceded it. But Bump doesn’t give Trump this limited assist in order to help him. What he wants to do is a psychological analysis of why Trump uttered each of these stupid phrases. He’s stalling. He’s remembering one time he talked about child care with Sen. Marco Rubio and another when Ivanka mentioned it. He’s grasping for an applause line. He’s become aware he’s not answering the question. He’ll fix it with one simple idea, which he’s already mentioned. He’s back on track with his MAGA message. And so on.
It’s a clever piece by Bump, who I admire as one of the better journalists in the game today. But it’s a lot of words on Bump’s part to say what boils down to “Trump doesn’t know anything about child care or tariffs or the deficit and he’s completely full of shit.”
And the thing is, Trump was president for four years and it’s almost impossible to do a job for four years and learn absolutely nothing substantive, but this man pulled it off. If anything, his mental decline means he’s less able to grasp and discuss policy that he was before he occupied the White House. The result is that he’s more dependent than ever on the snow job to cover up his inadequacies and the stupidity of the policies he’s advancing.
But this isn’t a new thing. Back in 2015 or 2016, he got a big laugh at a rally when he suggested he’d get Mexico to pay for a border wall, and suddenly he started treating it as a real policy. Now he’s treating tariffs as a miracle policy to balance the budget and pay for everything even though that’s even less plausible than the border wall bullshit.
Tariffs make imported goods and materials more expensive for consumers and producers, and that’s called inflation. Tariffs invite impacted countries to retaliate, which diminishes exports of American products, limiting economic and job growth. And that reduces the amount of revenue the government raises in taxes. You won’t solve inflation or balance the budget with tariffs. What you might do is prop-up an American industry that is struggling against foreign competitors, and that’s not always a bad thing. But it is not a “specific piece of legislation” to “make child care affordable.”
And his audience at the Economic Club of New York certainly understood his tariff nonsense for what it is, which is pure foolishness.
So, that’s the broad story here. Trump is peddling economic fantasies and foolishness. As to the specific answer on child care, the story is that he couldn’t answer the question because he’s a doddering unhinged dunderhead.
Bump’s piece is clever and somewhat useful, but I’d prefer if we could just stick to what’s important which isn’t understanding the perverse meanderings of Trump’s addled mind but the overall ridiculousness of the idea that he’s mentally or morally fit to be president.
