Billionaire business owner Mark Cuban has criticized Donald Trump‘s answers to policy questions, describing them as “gibberish.”
On Thursday, Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, gave a speech at the Economic Club of New York and answered several policy questions in a long-winded fashion.
When asked how the U.S. could better coordinate trade policy and national security policy with China, Trump said he had a good relationship with President Xi Jinping, whom he described as “smart” and “tough.” He added that Xi had been his “dear, dear friend” before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump said he would reestablish a good relationship with China and then discussed why it was important that the U.S. got along with the rest of the world, touching on nuclear weapons, his uncle John Trump, former President Barack Obama and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“Did he answer the question at all?” Cuban wrote in a series of posts on X, formerly Twitter, that criticized Trump’s answers. “MSM [mainstream media] doesn’t want to address the fact that all of his answers today were gibberish,” he said in a separate post.
Newsweek has contacted the Trump campaign for comment.
Here is another one. Did he answer the question at all ?“How can we better institutionalize trade policy and national security policy to be coordinated”
What are your thoughts on his answer pic.twitter.com/PgdXib7w9V
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) September 5, 2024
In his response to the policy question, the former president did not give specifics about which trade or national security policies he would advance, other than saying he wished to maintain his relationship with Xi and avoid nuclear war.
Here is an excerpt of his answer: “But I think I’ll have a great relationship with China. I had one before, and they respected us. But they respected us because they no longer thought we were fools. They used to think we were fools because we built China. They would take over $500 billion a year and use it for their military and other things. And we got nothing out of that. We got some cheap product. We got, ‘You can buy 19 pencils instead of two.’ Who the hell cares? ‘You can buy 16 dolls for your daughter instead of two nice dolls.’ And we got very little out of that relationship. They got a tremendous military power, and they still have it today.”
When asked if he would commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable, and if so, which specific piece of legislation he would advance, Trump gave an equally digressive answer about how he might be able to fund it with tariffs, without providing a child care policy.
“Well, I would do that,” Trump said, adding, “I was somebody—we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about that—because, look, child care is child care.”
Trump went on to describe his plans to levy large import tariffs on foreign countries, saying, “those [tariff] numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take 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, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about,” he continued. “We’re going to 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.”
The former president finished his answer with his familiar slogan: “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.”
“Those were not ‘answers.’ They were Mad Libs.” Cuban wrote on X. “If harris Biden or Vance had used the same words the MSM would crucify them. Instead, crickets.”
“The man talks #gibberish and the MSM ALWAYS covers for him,” he continued. “Every article about the questions so far has made it sound like they were direct responses. They were #gibberish.”
The post Mark Cuban Attacks Donald Trump’s ‘Gibberish’ Answers appeared first on Newsweek.
