The ‘We Want More Babies’ Ticket Has No Plan for Childcare Costs

Barf Bag: This week, both Trump and Vance make incredibly awkward comments about how they plan to address the cost of childcare. (Spoiler: They don't plan to address it.)

By Susan Rinkunas  |  September 6, 2024 | 5:01pm
Photo: Getty Images Politics Donald Trump
The ‘We Want More Babies’ Ticket Has No Plan for Childcare Costs

Welcome back to Barf Bag. 

Former president Donald Trump and JD Vance are desperately trying to appear pro-woman in the final sprint toward Election Day, but it’s a difficult gambit to pull off when you wholeheartedly supported the end of Roe v. Wade and all the resulting abortion bans. And this week, both Trump and Vance made incredibly awkward comments about how they plan to address the cost of childcare. (Spoiler: They don’t plan to address it.)

Abortion remains a top issue for women voters—especially younger ones—and the Trump campaign knows it. They’re scrambling to not seem out of touch, but it’s not going very well. Clips of Vance blabbing about how women without kids don’t contribute to society, and that parents should get more votes than childless people, keep getting recirculated. And after Democratic nominee Kamala Harris said in her Democratic National Convention speech that Trump would restrict abortion nationwide, Trump was reportedly so defensive about it that he posted a laughable statement on Truth Social the next morning. “My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” he claimed. Buddy, no one believes that!

Then last week, Trump decided that he all of a sudden supports health insurance mandates and lied through his teeth that, if elected, he would make the government or insurance companies pay for IVF treatments, which are notoriously expensive. But at an event later in the day with former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, he rambled his way through Christian nationalist talking points about birth rates. “We are doing something with IVF because, I mean, as you know, friends, it’s really worked out very well for a lot of people,” Trump said. “We wanna produce babies in this country, right?” Produce babies? This is creepy shit.

Cut to this week when right-wing shitheel Charlie Kirk asked Vance about lowering the cost of daycare. Vance responded: “Maybe Grandpa or Grandma wants to help a little bit more. Maybe there’s an aunt or uncle who wants to help a little bit more.” Mind you, he said this after catching a lot of shit for agreeing on a 2020 podcast episode that the “whole purpose of the postmenopausal female” is to help raise grandchildren.

The backlash was swift. Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg wrote on Twitter: “I can’t get over how disrespectful this is. It’s the answer of someone who has never seriously considered any aspect of how care policy works, because he believes — but knows better than to say out loud — that women should be home taking care of the kids.” (It’s very funny to me, personally, that a man trying to style himself as a pro-union populist simply loves the idea of unpaid work.)

Then it was Trump’s turn to reveal that the forced-birth ticket has no plans for making childcare affordable. After a Thursday speech at the Economic Club of New York, Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code, asked Trump what specific legislation he would support to make childcare more affordable.

He rambled in such a way that if he were literally any other politician, there would be a weeklong media cycle about his mental faculties. Here’s a clip:

Saujani said on Twitter afterward that Trump’s response was “incomprehensible at best; at worst, outrageously offensive to the millions of families drowning in costs.”

The bottom line is that these motherfuckers don’t have a plan for daycare and childcare because their right-wing worldview dictates a society in which men have jobs and women stay at home to gestate, birth, and raise children.

  • Right-wing YouTuber Tim Pool, whose work was allegedly being funded by Russia, added a Ukrainian flag emoji to his Twitter handle after the Department of Justice indicted two Russian nationals. [NBC News/Twitter]
  • Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s plan to take his name off swing-state ballots to help Trump isn’t going so well! [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]
  • During a Thursday speech, Trump repeatedly insulted Jewish Democrats. He said any Jewish person who votes for Democrats is “an absolute fool” who needs “their head examined.” [NBC News/Washington Post]
  • The Trump campaign axed a New Hampshire volunteer who said in an email that the state is no longer winnable. [The Independent]
  • Former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy lied on CNN by claiming that abortion is “not a presidential issue anymore” because it’s left to the states. [The Hill]
  • Another former GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who embarrassingly endorsed Trump, has a new job at a giant PR firm. [Axios]
  • Trump-endorsed Montana Senate candidate Tim Sheehy was caught on tape making racist comments about Native Americans. Montana has seven reservations and indigenous people account for 6% of the state’s population. [New York Times]
  • Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) vetoed a bill that would have required insurance companies to cover a year’s worth of birth control at a time. Insurers didn’t oppose the bill but a spokesperson said “contraceptives are widely available, and compelling insurance companies to provide mandatory coverage for a year is bad policy.” [Associated Press]

This has been your weekly Barf Bag, thanks for reading! 

 
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