Yesterday, Donald and Ivanka Trump introduced the Trump campaign’s much awaited (right?) child care plan for the well-off (to maybe be funded by cuts to unemployment insurance).
As part of his speech during the unveiling, Trump boldly declared that Clinton had never come up with a child care plan of her own and “never will”.
Ivanka Trump also made the rounds with the claim:
Appearing on Fox News on Tuesday evening, Ivanka claimed that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton doesn’t have any plans when it comes to childcare and paid leave. “There’s no policy on Hillary Clinton’s website pertaining to any of these issues, childcare, eldercare, or maternity leave or paternity leave for that matter,” she said. “There’s no policy that’s been articulated on how to solve the problem.”
Maybe before tooting her own horn and positioning herself as superior to Clinton on this front, Ivanka should have given the Clinton website more than a cursory glance because it specifically addresses the issue multiple times and from multiple angles:
Also too, a quick Google search may have done Ivanka some good given that it was all the way back in May that Clinton formally released her three pronged child care plan (which was described by The Washington Post as “lofty,” “bold” and “enormous(ly) ambitious”).
Hillary Clinton this week unveiled her vision for more quality child care in the United States, a lofty plan that includes raising pay for the industry’s workers. But the boldest idea targets parents, who now face day-care costs that rival college tuition. Clinton wants to cap that expense at 10 percent of a household’s income.
Considering that some people spend more on child care than rent, such a price shift would significantly ease the financial strain for families nationwide. Getting there, however, could be an extraordinary challenge.
Ivanka was clearly informed of her mistake after the horse left the stable so, this morning, she switched gears and claimed that she really meant that Clinton had been in the public sphere for a long time and had never done anything on the subject.
By Wednesday morning, Ivanka’s attack line on Clinton had changed slightly. Appearing on Good Morning America, she instead said Clinton should have passed paid family leave during her years in elected office. “Respectively, Hillary Clinton has been around for decades, and there’s no policy benefitting [sic] either mothers or fathers in terms of paid leave,” Ivanka said. “Certainly she [had an] opportunity to have a concept like that.”
...
“We have not been in public office for the last several decades and she has. She could have instituted some of those policies in that role and has not done so.”
Really, Ivanka? Are you seriously that ignorant about a) how this whole legislating thing works in the United Sates and b) the woman running against your father for the highest office in the land? The woman who has been championing children’s issues since the moment she left law school? The woman behind the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and the first ever White House Conference on Child Care (1997)? The woman who sponsored legislative effort after legislative effort to help families and children across the country? The woman who made paid family leave a part of her very first speech in this race and hired Ann O’Leary, “a nationally recognized expert in developing polices that promote early childhood education and labor protections for working families”, as one of her top three advisers?
So, yeah, Ivanka missed the mark on this one by about a million miles which should be (and probably is) quite embarrassing for her.
But you know who should be even more embarrassed? The New York Times, which repeated the Trump line that Clinton ‘didn’t have a child care plan and never would’ and then characterized it not as “untrue” but as “stretch(ing) the truth”.
Note to writers and editors at the New York Times:
“Stretching the truth” is not another way of saying something is “a lie” or “isn’t true”. It is not a synonym. Not even close. Why? Because it implies that there is, in fact, an element of truth to the statement being made.
Do you need a dictionary? A thesaurus?
Just in case, I’ve set up a Wish Lift gift registry for you at Amazon. Maybe someone out there will take some pity and help you out.