Indian American Reshma Saujani Lands Trump in Trouble Asking Him About His Child Care Policy
- The founder of Moms First and Girls Who Code, asked the GOP presidential nominee what specific legislation would back to make child care more affordable.
Donald Trump’s dodging an answer to a question about his childcare plan during a Q&A session at the Economic Club of New York has received a lot of criticism, including from the Indian American woman who posed the question to the GOP presidential nominee. Trump’s response was “incomprehensible at best; at worst, outrageously offensive to the millions of families drowning in costs,” Reshma Saujani, founder of Moms First and Girls Who Code, wrote on X.
Saujani, an Economic Club of New York trustee, raised the issue of childcare, which she said cost the U.S. economy more than $142 billion a year and outpaced the cost of inflation. She asked Trump what specific legislation would back to make child care more affordable. Noting that he had spoken about the price increases for food, gas, and rent, she said “The real cost that’s breaking families backs and preventing women from participating in the workforce is child care.”
In a video posted on TikTok, she said she believes Trump was making a different point that she called “shocking,” and that the cost of child care is not that a big problem for the U.S. when compared to the sums involved in tariff collection.
Trump did not answer her directly. Instead, he talked about the amount of money that would come into the U.S. through tariffs on foreign countries. He seemed to be suggesting that those sums could more than pay for child care needs, although he did not outline a plan for how the government should cover them.
Saujani told news media including CNN that Trump “basically said that child care was not that expensive or that tariffs would solve it.” She said Trump’s response “demonstrates to me how out of touch he really is. If you’re talking to parents and moms and families on the campaign trail, they’re talking about child care and the cost of it.”
A day earlier, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, was also asked about lowering the cost of daycare. His response to Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk at a campaign event in Arizona: “Maybe like grandma or grandpa wants to help out a little bit more. Or maybe there’s an aunt or uncle who wants to help out a little bit more.”