Donald Trump stumbled through a question about his child care plan on Thursday when asked if he'd prioritize the issue and how he would handle it if elected president.
The GOP presidential nominee's full response fell short of offering a coherent vision or policy for how he'd address child care needs, as he pivoted to promoting his proposed tariffs on imported goods to the U.S. and touting the revenue they would bring in.
Asked if he would “commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable” and “what specific piece of legislation” he would support during a Q&A session at the Economic Club of New York Thursday, Trump said:
“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 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 will 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 a failing nation. So we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question. Thank you.”
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Trump's response went viral online after the clip and transcript were shared, sparking criticism from the campaign of Democratic presidential rival Kamala Harris and leaving policy experts across the ideological spectrum baffled.
“Somewhere in that incoherent word salad was a claim that the proposed tariffs could both balance the budget and pay for free child care across the country, which is of course mathematically absurd,” said Brian Riedl, an economic policy expert with the conservative Manhattan Institute and a former policy adviser to prominent Republicans. “Trump sounded like the student who hadn’t studied for the test and was making up numbers.”
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The Harris campaign responded by attacking Trump's tariffs while highlighting her proposals to expand the child tax credit.
“Billionaire-bought Donald Trump’s ‘plan’ for making child care more affordable is to impose a $3,900 tax hike on middle class families,” Harris campaign spokesperson Joseph Costello said, citing estimates from two think tanks on the impact of Trump's tariff plan. “The American people deserve a President who will actually cut costs for them, like Vice President Harris’ plan to bring back a $3,600 Child Tax Credit for working families and an expanded $6,000 tax cut for families with newborn children.”
The Harris proposal is less aggressive than what the Biden White House has endorsed for families with children, which includes capping child care expenses for the middle class at 7% of income, as well as universal preschool. The Harris campaign didn't respond when asked if she'd push for those provisions if elected president.
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates mocked Trump's answer during a Friday interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
“If you have any idea what the hell that answer means, you’re a better detective than I am,” Bates said, before citing analyses by nonpartisan experts that Trump's tariffs would limit economic growth.
Reshma Saujani, who asked Trump the child care question at the Economic Club of New York, told NBC News after the event that the former president's answer “kind of blew my mind.”
“He basically said that child care was not that expensive or that tariffs would solve it,” said Saujani, who is a member of the board and said the club had invited her to ask Trump a question. “That demonstrates to me how out of touch he really is. If you’re talking to parents and moms and families on the campaign trail, they’re talking about child care and the cost of it.”
In her question to Trump, Saujani, a founder of the groups Moms First and Girls Who Code, cited statistics showing that child care costs a total of $122 billion a year and described it as “one of the most urgent economic issues facing our country.”
She asked him to mention a specific piece of legislation he would advance to address the problem.
Trump did not answer her directly. Instead, he talked about the amount of money that would come into the U.S. through tariffs on foreign countries. He seemed to be suggesting that those sums could more than pay for child care needs, although he did not outline a plan for how the government should cover them.
For her part, Saujani believes Trump was making a different point that she called “shocking”: that the cost of child care is not that a big problem for the U.S. when compared to the sums involved in tariff collection.
Asked to clarify his response, Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt replied: “President Trump’s first-term economic policies uplifted families by putting more money in our pockets, while making expanded access to childcare and paid family leave top priorities in his Administration. Now in Kamala Harris’ America, hardworking families are struggling to buy basic groceries, diapers, and baby formula for their children. President Trump will make America strong, safe, and prosperous again for struggling American families when he returns to the White House.”
This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:
