Just as JD Vance’s response to the rising cost of childcare spurred blowback on Thursday, Donald Trump may have one-upped him during a question-and-answer session when he responded to a similar prompt with a meandering 360-word statement with vague declarations, including that he “want[s] to stay with childcare.”
A day after his running mate said that parents should look to family members for help and called for the elimination of “ridiculous” certifications that childcare workers must obtain, Trump was asked a question along the same lines while at the prestigious Economic Club of New York.
Reshma Saujani, founder of the nonprofit organization Girls Who Code, prefaced her question by noting that childcare outpaces inflation and costs the economy more than $122 billion annually.
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“If you win in November,” she wondered, “can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make childcare affordable, and, if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”
Over the course of his nearly two-minute response, which anchor Anderson Cooper called “word salad” during a segment on CNN, Trump didn’t mention any such legislation.
Instead, he left viewers with lingering questions about how exactly he would go about bringing down child care costs.
“Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down—you know, I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so 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 look, child care is childcare, 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 gonna 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 gonna have—I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly 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 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—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 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 going to 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. Thank you.”
That response was highlighted later by Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, which has proposed re-expanding the Child Tax Credit on top of a $6,000 tax credit for new parents.
