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Yesterday, at the Economic Club of New York, one member asked Donald Trump a very specific question about his policy priorities: “If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable, and if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”

Trump’s reply was not only not specific; it was incoherent. After a little throat-clearing about how “important” an issue child care is, he seemed to turn to a discussion of his nebulous idea to increase tariffs on foreign imports, although even that is hard to ascertain. Trump said:

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.

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.

Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s gonna 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.

In a rare occurrence, Trump here seems to acknowledge that he has diverged from the topic at hand. But he suggests that tariffs are, for some reason, the topic worth talking about instead. He continues:

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 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 gonna 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.

It was a good question, particularly for a ticket that has claimed to be staunchly pro-family. As my colleague David Graham wrote this morning, “The GOP insists that it has become a pro-worker party in addition to a pro-family party, but when its policies are subjected to even minimal scrutiny, they seem to offer little to no benefits for working families.” (J. D. Vance, for his part, answered a similar question on Wednesday with the unrealistic assumption that all Americans can rely on family members for help with child care: “Maybe, like, Grandma or Grandpa wants to help out a little bit more.”)

The lack of clear policy commitments in Trump’s response is a problem; so is the fact that the tariff plan he has been hawking is likely to raise prices for American consumers by billions of dollars. But the biggest problem, the problem that all journalistic analysis of Trump’s response ought to lead with, is that his answer makes absolutely no sense. Earlier this summer, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, warned about “one of the most pernicious biases in journalism, the bias toward coherence.” Journalists “feel, understandably, that it is our job to make things make sense,” he wrote. “But what if the actual story is that politics today makes no sense?”

Reading through some media outlets’ attempts to report on Trump’s comments yesterday, one can witness in real time the process of trying to impose sense where there is none. An Associated Press headline reads: “Trump Suggests Tariffs Can Help Solve Rising Child Care Costs in a Major Economic Speech”; the article gives ample space—and the implication of seriousness—to Trump’s unspecified tariff plan. A CNN headline reads: “Trump Claims Boosting Tariffs Will Pay for Child Care but Doesn’t Explain How.” The story acknowledges that Trump “dodged” the question asked, but it still tries to parse a policy point from his answer, discussing economists’ concerns with Trump’s tariff idea and Harris’s own proposals to lower the cost of child care for Americans.

A Newsweek article rounded up some social-media comments about Trump’s incoherent response but then went on to say: “However, not all social media users were critical, with a number praising Trump for answering questions, pointing out that Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris has largely avoided unscripted interviews during her campaign.” This point will hopefully be obvious to most readers, but one can both believe that Harris’s campaign should have more sit-down interviews with reporters and hold Trump to a bar higher than he answered a question with words that did not make sense.

As the editor of this newsletter, I spend much of my time reading through press coverage of Donald Trump’s latest statements. In this case, I was heartened to see at least a few analyses leading with the incoherence of his child-care reply. But press coverage of Trump’s statements is not actually serving readers unless each and every article begins with the fact that his words are gibberish.

Trump’s inability to respond to the most basic of policy questions without devolving into inarticulate rambling does not bode well for next week’s debate. A similar performance then could show the American public once again that the man is not fit to be president. But it would help if journalists would report accurately on what we’re all seeing in front of us.

Related:

• The GOP’s pro-family delusion
• The reason child care is so hard to afford

Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

• Trump reminds voters that he’s been accused of sexual assault.
• Yuval Noah Harari’s apocalyptic vision
• Autocracy in America: The end of democracy has already begun.

Today’s News

1. The New York judge in Donald Trump’s hush-money case delayed the former president’s sentencing hearing until November 26.
2. A 26-year-old American activist was killed in the West Bank while protesting Israel’s occupation of the region, according to U.S. and Palestinian officials. The Israeli military said that its troops fired at a demonstrator, but it did not confirm the identity of who was shot.
3. The father of the teen suspect who killed four people at Apalachee High School was arrested and charged yesterday with involuntary manslaughter, second-degree murder, and cruelty to children, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Dispatches

• Atlantic Intelligence: Critics are missing the point of AI art, Matteo Wong writes.
• The Books Briefing: Pain can stump even gifted writers, but a few have managed to describe the experience exquisitely, Emma Sarappo writes.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

The Mysterious, Meteoric Rise of Shein

By Timothy McLaughlin

The most remarkable thing about Shein might be how opaque it remains even as it dominates U.S. retail. Its origins in China—where most Shein items are made—should, in theory, subject the company to extra scrutiny in the United States. Yet much about Shein is still unknown. How did it so quickly take over American retail? Who runs it, and how does it offer so many products so cheaply? Over the past year, I sought answers to these questions, and what I learned was hardly reassuring.

Read the full article.

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Culture Break

Take a bite. Snacks have taken over American life, Ellen Cushing writes. How did we get here?

Watch. Kaos (out now on Netflix) is a new show that offers a sharp twist on Greek mythology, Hannah Giorgis writes.

Play our daily crossword.

P.S.

For your weekend reading, I recommend this essay by the writer and doctor Ezekiel J. Emanuel, in which he argues that no one older than 75 should be president. (Longtime Atlantic readers may remember his unforgettable 2014 article on a similar subject.) The public conversation around presidential candidates’ age and cognitive fitness has somewhat cooled since Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the race, but it’s a discussion that remains worth having—all the more so because if the current Republican nominee wins, he will be the oldest president in American history.

— Isabel

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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