Mary Trump, the former president’s estranged niece, called out Donald Trump on what she described as his “disjointed riffing” during his appearance at the New York Economic Club last week, where he suggested tariffs would lower childcare costs.
The Republican presidential nominee on Sept. 5 laid out his economic vision for the country, including what actions he’s going to take, if elected, to boost the country’s economy, address the affordability crisis in the U.S. housing market, and increase domestic energy supply.
Asked about his plans to drive down childcare costs in the U.S., which have become a massive financial burden for American parents, Trump mentioned that increasing tariffs on foreign imports would resolve the issue.
Donald Trump departs a campaign event at Central Wisconsin Airport on September 7, 2024, in Mosinee, Wisconsin. The former president’s estranged niece said “nobody” can follow the “gibberish” of Trump’s speeches.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
“Childcare is childcare, it’s something you have to have in this country. You have to have it,” the former president said. “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,” he added, moving on to tariffs.
Trump said he wanted “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 told you about.”
He added that tariffs would “take care” of lowering childcare costs. “We’re going to 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,” he said.
Commenting on his response, Mary Trump said: “I defy anybody who was actually trying to follow the thread of that gibberish to tell me what it means. Nobody can.”
The psychologist, who’s the daughter of Donald Trump’s brother Fred, added that “the only phrase” of the former president’s speech on childcare that had “any logical consistency” was “childcare is childcare.”
The rest she called “just disjointed riffing coupled with his greatest hits and catch phrases.”
Newsweek contacted Trump’s campaign for comment by email on Monday morning.
The former president’s niece stressed the importance of reporting Trump’s full speeches instead of “translating” what he says, which she said the media does, “imbuing them with a meaning that is not there.”
Following the withdrawal of Joe Biden from the presidential race, concerns over the mental acuity of Trump—who’s now the elder of the two nominees at the age of 78—have increased as many of his speeches often go off on a confusing tangent.
Last weekend, Trump reassured supporters in Pennsylvania that his meandering speeches are not as incoherent as they may appear.
“I do the weave. You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about, like, nine different things that all come back brilliantly together,” he said. “And it’s like friends of mine that are like English professors, they say: ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen,'” he told the audience, adding that “fake news” would call it “rambling.”
“It’s not rambling,” he said. “What you do is you get off a subject to mention another little titbit, then you get back on to the subject, and you go through this and you do it for two hours, and you don’t even mispronounce one word.”
