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‘Can’t Even Find a Complete Sentence’: Trump’s ‘Gobbldygook’ Childcare ‘Solution’ Slammed
Donald Trump kicked off his 75-minute address to the New York Economic Club on Thursday by name-checking some of his friends in the financial community, making several questionable claims that went unchecked, and talking about “African Americans’ and Hispanic American jobs.” He closed out the event with a panelist asking him how, if elected, he would help Americans afford child care, a question he ultimately did not answer.
At one point in his early remarks Trump falsely claimed, “the typical American family lost over $28,000 due to rampant, record-setting inflation.” It is a claim he has made before, one debunked by last month by award-winning political commentator Heather Digby Parton: “Nobody knows where he got that amount and the campaign isn’t saying.”
During his speech Trump also vowed to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, if he is elected, before he is inaugurated.
The final question of the day was about the high cost of childcare and how difficult it is for parents to pay for it.
READ MORE: ‘Something’s in Play Here’ Says Ex-Trump NatSec Official on DOJ Russian Disinfo Indictment
“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?” Trump was asked by Reshma Saujani, founder of the nonprofit Girls Who Code and its campaign to help mothers, Moms First.
Trump offered parents no legislation, no ideas, no actual plan to help them pay for child care.
His response (video below) has been widely mocked.
Below is a full transcription of his response.
“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 child care is child care, couldn’t you know, there’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 going to take care we’re going to 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 child care. 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 that, I just told you about, we’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care 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 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 failing nation. So we’ll take care of it,” Trump said, to applause.
RELATED: ‘Absolutely Bombing’: Trump Makes Pre-Inauguration Ukraine War Vow in Economic Club Speech
Digby, the political commentator who debunked Trump’s $28,000 claim, commented, “They applaud this gobbldygook? He sounds like a 4th grader who didn’t read the book.”
“This is a dementia clinic,” remarked SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah. “Corporate media’s failure to have panels on with mental health experts analyzing this gibberish is unforgivable!”
Tim Wise, senior fellow at the African American Policy Forum, remarked: “This isn’t a word salad. It’s a word sewer.”
American Independent senior political reporter Emily C. Singer said, “This is absolute word vomit. He is a f*cking moron. The fact that he is even remotely close to winning this race is an embarrassment to this country.”
“Holy f*cking sh*t,” wrote Justin Kanew, founder of the progressive site The Tennessee Holler, and a former congressional candidate. “Vance’s answer on this was terrible (‘have grandma do it, lower requirements for taking care of kids’) but somehow Trump’s is way way worse.”
Kanew added, “unserious and unprepared. They don’t care about real people’s problems.”
Berkeley professor and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich said, “Spoiler: He doesn’t actually have a plan to make childcare more affordable. But he does have a plan to establish across-the-board tariffs on imports that will lead to huge price hikes and hurt everyone but the very wealthy.”
Catherine Rampell, The Washington Post op-ed columnist, CNN commentator, and PBS NewsHour special correspondent wrote, “My job is to analyze policy. I can’t even find a complete sentence in this.”
Watch Trump’s remarks below or at this link.
Donald Trump’s answer on how he will make childcare more affordable: pic.twitter.com/Hwu7R5aIt6
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 5, 2024
READ MORE: ‘Battening Down the Hatches’: Trump Campaign ‘In Crisis’ Say Experts After Latest Leak
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
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