I think Donald Trump just likes the word “club.” He’s got a few exclusive clubs, he loves his golf clubs, police carry clubs, heck, his favorite food is probably a club sandwich (with no vegetables).

He just likes being part of a club, one way or the other

That’s likely why he jumped at the chance to speak to the Economic Club of New York. He probably thought that he’d be in a room with a bunch of people with a lot of money from his hometown.

Unfortunately for Donald, that’s not what they are. They are a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to giving some serious thought to some serious things. None of those things involve running America like a business, as Trump wants to do.

In fact, ironically, it’s probably GOOD that’s not what they do, since Trump isn’t even allowed to DO business in New York anymore.

Regardless, what Trump is used to when appearing in public is fawning interviewers with softball questions. He is not used to substance at all. And as I said, this is a serious group. If he tells them “Kamala destroyed California,” they might actually ask him how, as no one has seemed to yet.

But Trump was not invited there to trash-talk his opponent in the presidential race. As he quickly found out, he was there to answer specific policy questions. And while I will begrudgingly admit that there are one or two things that Trump is decent at, policy is not one of those things.

After some platitudes and thank yous, the panel hosting the former president jumped right in to the hard stuff. I’m talking, a question that had Trump’s head spinning “like nobody’s ever seen before,” to borrow a phrase from a famous windbag.

“ECNY Panelist: President Trump, in the last fiscal year, the fiscal deficit under the Biden administration was approximately $2 trillion. Under the policies that you’ve announced, the deficit would come down from items such as increased revenues from tariffs, as well as eliminating the tax incentives of the Green New Deal. These gains would be mitigated by decreases in revenues from policies such as “no tax on tips.”

Overall, what do you estimate will be the impact on the fiscal deficit from your policies?”

“Well, my favorite color is green,” Trump began. No, I’m kidding, of course. He did not say that. What he did say was FAR more ridiculous. Trump absolutely thought he could just give an answer like one of his rally claims.

“It’s like… It’s crazy. It’s just horrible, actually.” That’s how he really started. “But, uh, yeah, we’re– two trillion, and I view it as profit and loss to a certain extent. A lot of people say, ‘Oh, it’s trade,’ you know, you have many people say ‘trade deficits don’t matter.’ I think they matter a lot. Uh, we’re going to have tremendous growth, this, what I’m talking about is all about growth. The tax is relatively minor compared to growth, we’re going to make our money back on growth, we’re going to also— you know, we’re going to grow like nobody’s ever grown before.”

Now, switch all of the instances of “going to” (where I was being kind in transcribing) and change it to “gonna,” and you have just the tip of the ridiculous answer he gave.

In all fairness to the Fearless Bleater, there are only a handful of people who could answer that question as succinctly as it was asked. But Trump sounded so far out of his element, he might as well have been trying to understand his kid speaking Slovenian to the Secret Service.

Anyway, Trump didn’t stop there. It was another full, excruciating minute of listening to him insult other people over their management of money before he even reached the end of his answer. Full circle, he returned to the “tremendous growth” theme, still not specifying so much as which growth store they were going to go pick up all this growth at, since they’re going to have so much of it. Is he getting a bulk price on growth? Does he get the senior discount?

But what really underscores Trump being out of his depth is his fixation on tariffs — which backfired on him HORRIBLY the first time he tried it — and his continuing to look at government spending as profit and loss, rather than a deficit.

Profit and loss is what you report on your taxes. A trade deficit is how you determine the state of the economy, specifically overall net exports.

His tariffs are expected to cost Americans $1,700 a year.

It’s very obvious that Trump has zero clue what was even being asked, let alone what the things he was saying back meant. It’s like he remembered some of the stuff he rehearsed, but said it in answer to the wrong question.