On September 5, 2024, a voter at the Economic Club of New York asked Donald Trump what he planned to do about the cost of child care. He called it a “very important issue.” He said, specifically of daycare, “In this country, you have to have it.”
Of course, he was running for president then. He needed votes. He told us what we needed to hear.
This week, at an Easter luncheon at the White House (not open to the press, though he posted the video himself before someone thought better of it and deleted it) the president said something rather different.
“Don’t send any money for daycare, because the United States can’t take care of daycare.”
And then, in case the message wasn’t clear enough:
“We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare.”
He continued. Medicare. Medicaid. All of it, apparently, is now beyond the federal government’s capacity. The states can handle it. They’ll have to raise their taxes, but they can handle it. State’s rights or something.
This is not a policy evolution. This is not a recalibration. This is a man who told working parents their struggle was real and urgent and deserving of federal action, won their votes, then stood in the White House on Easter Wednesday and told the people who funded his wars that daycare isn’t his problem anymore.
That is called a fucking lie.
It was a lie when he told it, or it became one the moment he found it inconvenient.
He did not say this quietly. He said it with the conviction of a man who believes accountability has already been neutralized. He told his budget director, Russell Vought, to stop sending money for daycare. Not to reform it. Not to audit it. To stop it. This was not an oversight. It was a decision, announced at a holiday lunch, then scrubbed from the internet.
The White House, confronted with the recording, issued a statement claiming Trump was merely talking about fraud.
Please. He was not talking about fraud. The transcript exists. He was talking about priorities. His priority is military spending. His priority is war. His priority is himself.
The Iran operation cost over eleven billion dollars in its first six days.
Eleven billion dollars. In six days.
The entire federal child care system costs approximately thirty billion dollars per year.
He found the money for war. He told your daycare provider there was nothing left.
This is the compact he offered: Strong military, yes. Secure borders, yes. But he also said your children would be cared for. He said working parents would be supported. He said it was important. He said it was necessary. “In this country, you have to have it.”
He lied.
The cruelest part is not the reversal. Politicians reverse all the time, its their natural operating mode. It is the setting he chose. He chose Easter. He chose a private lunch with allies and donors. He chose the company of people who will not be harmed by the elimination of child care subsidies, who will not be scrambling to cover a gap that the federal government just walked away from, who will not be choosing between keeping their job and keeping their child somewhere safe.
He told them. He did not tell you. Someone else had to tell you, and then the video disappeared.
The people who depend on Medicare were not in that room. The people who depend on Medicaid were not in that room. The parents paying three hundred dollars a week for the only licensed provider in their zip code were not in that room.
He spoke to the crowd that was there, his crowd.
The rest of you, including parents trying to provide care for their children? Suck it up, deadbeats, we have wars to fight!
Trump can’t fund your child’s daycare. He can, however, fund the missile that killed a schoolful of someone else’s.