Mind you, I’m cool with the Massive Welfare State Expansion part. In response to a question about the childcare crisis, Trump offered this as a response (boldface mine):

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 childcare, it’s—couldn’t, you know, it’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 gonna 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 childcare, that it’s going to take care.

We’re gonna 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 childcare. I want to stay with childcare, 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 gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as childcare 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 gonna 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.

If you pick through the vomitus, it seems like Trump is proposing tariffs to pay for childcare, along with unspecified claims of ‘waste’ (leading to the question of why that waste wasn’t addressed when he was president). It’s a stupid policy, but the whole quote also shows how incoherent he is. I think he’s worse than he once was, but, if he’s not, then it’s clear that the coverage of Trump has failed epically to convey just how incoherent he is.

As I’ve noted previously, he’s so addled, he can’t even do bigotry right–and Trump loves himself some bigotry!

What would help here–though maybe they’re waiting until after the debate–would be for professional Democrats to start talking about Trump’s mental incompetency. It will become news if they decide to spend a considerable amount of time talking about it.

It is interesting that the major media outlets, while not writing headlines as stark as my post title, are not happy with this proposal, and they seem to be focusing on the tariffs and ‘waste’ parts.