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International Business Times
International Business Times
Mark Moore

Woman Who Triggered Trump's Wildly Disjointed Child Care Ramble Calls It 'Insulting'

Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Economic Club of New York on Thursday. (Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The woman whose question on affordable child care launched Donald Trump on a wildly disjointed answer said his response was "insulting" and reveals that he is "unfit" to return to the White House.

Reshma Saujani, who is on the board of trustees at the Economic Club of New York, asked the Republican presidential nominee on Thursday at a club event how he would make child care affordable after he boasted his policies would usher in a "national economic renaissance."

"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," Trump began.

"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," he added in a increasing rambling response that went on for two minutes.

Saujani was asked about Trump's answer during an appearance on CNN.

"What he told us is that childcare and expenses are no big deal. The fact that you're drowning in debt because of them, sorry, but not sorry," she said.

"And he also told us that, no, I don't have any ideas or proposals or legislation, and it's insulting," she said.

"It is insulting to parents who are constantly having to choose between funding their daycare and feeding their kids," Saujani told anchor Jake Tapper, noting that if Trump has no plan to solve child care "you are not fit to be president."

Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign pounced on Trump's wandering response and posted a Washington Post columnist commenting on the former president's economic message.

"To the extent that he said things that were coherent, and some of it was just sort of words randomly chosen out of a dictionary, I think," Catherine Rampell said.

"To the extent that he said anything that was coherent, it was kind of what we would expect. It was a promise of more income tax cuts, higher tariffs, which, by the way, tariffs are taxes," she said.

Consumers pay tariffs in higher prices for imported products. Trump has falsely indicated that foreign countries such as China essentially write a check for imposed tariffs to the U.S. Treasury.

Trump's answer on child care also raised questions about why he hasn't been subjected to the same scrutiny President Joe Biden was when he offered meandering explanations, including his disastrous performance at June's debate with Trump that eventually led to Biden dropping out of the race.

MSNBC's Alex Wagner raised that issue on her show.

After showing several clips of Trump going off on tangents, she asked:
"Where is the avalanche of analysis questioning that guy's mental dexterity? Where?"

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