Dimitri DhuyvetterSep 10, 2024
A New Level of Incoherence From Trump
His answer to a specific policy question yesterday made absolutely no sense.
By Isabel
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/09/a-new-level-of-incoherence-from-trump/679742/
#Trump #Trump2024 #USpol #USpolitics
A new level of incoherence from Trump

His answer to a specific policy question yesterday made absolutely no sense.

The Atlantic
Show threadDimitri DhuyvetterSep 10, 2024
Yesterday, at the Economic Club of New York, one member asked Donald Trump a very specific question about his policy priorities: “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?”
Show threadDimitri DhuyvetterSep 10, 2024
Trump’s reply was not only not specific; it was incoherent. After a little throat-clearing about how “important” an issue child care is, he seemed to turn to a discussion of his nebulous idea to increase tariffs on foreign imports, although even that is hard to ascertain. Trump said:
Show threadDimitri DhuyvetterSep 10, 2024
“But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that—because, look, child care is child care. It’s, couldn’t—you know, there’s something … You have to have it. In this country, you have to have it.” #TrumpSays
Show threadDimitri Dhuyvetter
“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.” #trumpsays
Sep 10, 2024 at 10:34amMetatext
Show threadDimitri DhuyvetterSep 10, 2024
“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 stay with child care. I want to stay with child care,
Show threadDimitri DhuyvetterSep 10, 2024

but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth.” #trumpsays

In a rare occurrence, Trump here seems to acknowledge that he has diverged from the topic at hand. But he suggests that tariffs are, for some reason, the topic worth talking about instead.

Show threadDimitri DhuyvetterSep 10, 2024

He continues:

“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 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.” #trumpsays

Show threadDimitri DhuyvetterSep 10, 2024
“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.” #trumpsays
Show threadDimitri DhuyvetterSep 10, 2024
It was a good question, particularly for a ticket that has claimed to be staunchly pro-family. As my colleague David Graham wrote this morning, “The GOP insists that it has become a pro-worker party in addition to a pro-family party, but when its policies are subjected to even minimal scrutiny, they seem to offer little to no benefits for working families.”
Show threadDimitri DhuyvetterSep 10, 2024
(J. D. Vance, for his part, answered a similar question on Wednesday with the unrealistic assumption that all Americans can rely on family members for help with child care: “Maybe, like, Grandma or Grandpa wants to help out a little bit more.”)
Show threadDimitri DhuyvetterSep 10, 2024
The lack of clear policy commitments in Trump’s response is a problem; so is the fact that the tariff plan he has been hawking is likely to raise prices for American consumers by billions of dollars. But the biggest problem, the problem that all journalistic analysis of Trump’s response ought to lead with, is that his answer makes absolutely no sense.
Show threadDimitri DhuyvetterSep 10, 2024
Earlier this summer, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, warned about “one of the most pernicious biases in journalism, the bias toward coherence.” Journalists “feel, understandably, that it is our job to make things make sense,” he wrote. “But what if the actual story is that politics today makes no sense?”
Show threadDimitri DhuyvetterSep 10, 2024
Reading through some media outlets’ attempts to report on Trump’s comments yesterday, one can witness in real time the process of trying to impose sense where there is none. An Associated Press headline reads: “Trump Suggests Tariffs Can Help Solve Rising Child Care Costs in a Major Economic Speech”; the article gives ample space—and the implication of seriousness—to Trump’s unspecified tariff plan.
Show threadDimitri DhuyvetterSep 10, 2024
A CNN headline reads: “Trump Claims Boosting Tariffs Will Pay for Child Care but Doesn’t Explain How.” The story acknowledges that Trump “dodged” the question asked, but it still tries to parse a policy point from his answer, discussing economists’ concerns with Trump’s tariff idea and Harris’s own proposals to lower the cost of child care for Americans.
Show threadDimitri DhuyvetterSep 10, 2024
A Newsweek article rounded up some social-media comments about Trump’s incoherent response but then went on to say: “However, not all social media users were critical, with a number praising Trump for answering questions, pointing out that Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris has largely avoided unscripted interviews during her campaign.”
Show threadDimitri DhuyvetterSep 10, 2024
This point will hopefully be obvious to most readers, but one can both believe that Harris’s campaign should have more sit-down interviews with reporters and hold Trump to a bar higher than he answered a question with words that did not make sense.
Show threadDimitri DhuyvetterSep 10, 2024
As the editor of this newsletter, I spend much of my time reading through press coverage of Donald Trump’s latest statements. In this case, I was heartened to see at least a few analyses leading with the incoherence of his child-care reply. But press coverage of Trump’s statements is not actually serving readers unless each and every article begins with the fact that his words are gibberish.
Show threadDimitri DhuyvetterSep 10, 2024
Trump’s inability to respond to the most basic of policy questions without devolving into inarticulate rambling does not bode well for next week’s debate. A similar performance then could show the American public once again that the man is not fit to be president. But it would help if journalists would report accurately on what we’re all seeing in front of us.