J D Vance on child care,
“A lot of grandparents, some aunts, some of these uncles, whatever makes sense…”
The unstated answer was that women should be in the workforce.
He wanted to say “the childless cat ladies in your family” but decided to resist that urge.
Ya know… If I hadn’t only been thinking about the donut incident I might have had the comedy chops to make the cat lady call-back, but no.
At least I set up the joke like a decent straight man should!
Yeah, it definitely wasn’t “We need to raise wages so every Mother in this country can stay home with her children, should she choose to do so.”
I meant to say he was implying the women should NOT be in the workforce.
How so? When he was stating that grandma should do the babysitting?
Maybe I missed his implication.
nevermind, already discussed.
"Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down, and I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so, uh, 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 is. 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 gonna stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Uh, 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 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, 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, uh, that I just told you about.
We’re gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care, uh, 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 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."
Did any mainstream paper quote this response, or was it summarized as “Trump discussed the issue of social programs”?
And we are going to stay right here in orbit around Gamma Hydra II until we get this straightened out!
That’s the kind of Trumpian answer that could get people talking at the debates.
ETA: my favorite comment to the Medias Touch post of this Trump answer
Don’t ask ChatGPT if (based on Trump’s most recent word salad) we should give this person the nuclear codes because I’m pretty sure that’s the moment when Skynet becomes self aware and decides that we are the threat.
Ha! Deep.
Basically, he is conflating the cost of childcare to individual families with the supposed money that will be raised for the country by tariffs on imports that somehow he’ll get the national debt paid down. (Headscratch) Uh, what? It goes on, but doesn’t make any more sense.
Then Vance is asked a similar question, and his answer is to encourage more options like family members, and also support education so more people can get qualified to do childcare. I guess that’s sort of a free market answer. If more people are qualified, more can get in the business so then there will be greater access and more competition, which should drive down costs. Except he’s too dumb to even say it that way, so instead he’s just telling people to rely on their grandmas and grandpas, or something.
He starts his remark by saying make it easier for families to choose whatever model they want. The obvious counter model to “both parents working” (because it’s Vance, so that’s his assumed family structure) is “someone stays home”. And guess who that someone should be? “Oh wait, I better not say that, uh, grandma and grandpa.” He practically stutters over m-m-m before getting to grandma.
Yeah, he said that childcare money is small compared to those other numbers, whatever that means.
It felt to me like what he didn’t really have an answer or a plan for affordable child care, but he did want to talk about tariffs, so that’s what he spun his answer into (though he vaguely tried to pivot back to the actual question once or twice).
And heaped praise on former President Wm. McKinley.
Pretty sure that hasn’t been done by a candidate in a long, long while.
(On a side note, McKinley was in office at an interesting point in our history and took actions that were very consequential to the nation before he was assassinated in 1901. He also had some crazy eyebrows.)
They didn’t give him time to complete his infamous “weave” that English professors praise. If they would’ve given him more time, it would’ve come together at the end and we’d all be rejoicing at the beauty of his brilliant rhetoric.
My impression was, he wanted to say, “We’ll bring in so much tax revenue that paying for child care will be a drop in the bucket compared to our revenues!”
Of course, he didn’t add the obvious Republican follow-up, “…but of course, we won’t actually spend that money, you fucking communist!”