During Donald Trump’s remarks at an Easter lunch reception at the White House, the president wasn’t asked for his position on helping American families cover the costs of day care, but he took some time to pontificate on the subject anyway.

“I said to [Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought], ‘Don’t send any money for day care, because the United States can’t take care of day care.’ That has to be up to a state,” the Republican said. “We can’t take care of day care. We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We’re fighting wars, we can’t take care of day care. You got to let a state take care of day care, and they should pay for it, too. They should pay.”

He went on to say that it’s just “not possible” for the federal government to help defray the cost of day care, adding, “You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.”

Taken at face value, the rhetoric probably didn’t strike many observers as surprising. The setting might have been unusual, but that Trump made the case for investing in wars instead of day care at an Easter Lunch reception is largely consistent with the president’s MO.

It is, however, worth taking a brief stroll down memory lane and looking back at the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.

In September 2024, for example, Trump fielded questions at the Economic Club of New York, and one voter asked what he could do to help address the cost of child care. He began by describing it as a “very important issue,” and said specifically of day care, “In this country, you have to have it.”

As part of that exchange, Trump appeared to suggest that he expected his trade tariffs to generate so much revenue that it could help cover day care costs. “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,” he concluded.

A month later, with early voting underway across most of the country, Trump also participated in a town hall event on Fox News with an audience made up entirely of women voters, one of whom talked about how difficult it was for her family to afford day care costs.

The candidate conceded that the existing system is “really not fair” and pledged to help families cover debilitating child care costs if elected to a second term.

That was just a few weeks before Election Day — when the Republican candidate was still talking about “putting America first” and avoiding costly foreign interventions. Seventeen months later, Trump hasn’t just forgotten about those assurances, he’s also turned his ostensible priorities inside out.

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