'Incoherent gibberish': Experts trash Trump’s 'incomprehensible' answer to policy question

06 September 2024

The fallout continues over Donald Trump’s remarks during what was billed as a “major economic speech” Thursday, now with business and economics experts blasting the ex-president’s “incoherent” answer when asked at The Economic Club of New York to explain what he would do to lower childcare costs for parents.

“Word Salad was served at the Economic Club of New York this afternoon. Despite the audience knowing it was a plate full of empty calories that may cause food poisoning… they ate it up,” MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle remarked on social media. An NBC News senior business analyst, Ruhle worked in the finance industry for 14 years.

“Calling Trump’s remarks at the NY Economics Club incoherent gibberish is not a biased attack. It is a completely rational observation. He did not speak in coherent or complete sentences. And when he did, proposals like (tarriffs – childcare) do not make sense,” Ruhle added on X overnight.

“The 11th Hour,” the MSNBC show Ruhle hosts, called Trump’s remarks “economically illiterate.”

Ruhle was far from the only expert to blast Trump’s comments.

Reshma Saujani is the founder of the nonprofits Moms First and Girls Who Code. her bio says she “has spent more than a decade building movements to fight for women and girls’ economic empowerment, working to close the gender gap in the tech sector, and most recently advocating for policies to support moms impacted by the pandemic.”

Saujani is also the person on stage who asked Trump the childcare question.

“Incomprehensible at best,” is how she later characterized his response, “at worst, outrageously offensive to the millions of families drowning in costs.”

Professor of economics and public policy Justin Wolfers, who often has appeared on MSNBC and CNN, posted a transcript of Trump’s remarks but deleted what policy issue he was actually discussing.

“With the context of his entire answer, can you guess what that issue is?” he asked.

Wolfers adds: “This policy analysis yields two substantive claims that relate to the topic:

1. “childcare is childcare” (fact check: true)
2. childcare is inexpensive relatively to his proposed tariffs (fact check: clearly false for many families with kids)”

New York Times financial columnist and CNBC anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin on MSNBC Friday said Trump’s remarks “seemed incoherent,” while warning that “the Republicans and the Trump machine have become really good at trying to bully people into submission, to some degree. To believe something that they don’t even believe because they’re seeing with their lying eyes and they’re unwilling to recognize what’s in front of them.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

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