Donald Trump's explanation on Wednesday about why he said women deserved to be punished for abortion was so incomprehensible that it probably left most viewers with less of an understanding about what he actually meant.
During a town hall event with MSNBC's Chris Matthews earlier this year, Trump had clearly stated that "there has to be some form of punishment" if the U.S. followed through with his platform of banning abortion.
“For the woman?” Matthews had pressed at the time.
“Yeah,” Trump replied, leaving no doubt that the punishment for the woman "would have to be determined."
But after becoming the Republican presumptive nominee this week, MSNBC's Willie Geist asked Trump if he still believed that to be true.
Trump replied:
No, he was asking me a theoretical, or just a question in theory, and I talked about it only from that standpoint. Of course not. And that was done, he said, you know, I guess it was theoretically, but he was asking a rhetorical question, and I gave an answer. And by the way, people thought from an academic standpoint, and, asked rhetorically, people said that answer was an unbelievable academic answer! But of course not, and I said that afterwards.
As Slate's Ben Mathis-Lilley observed, the word salad response from the candidate "is one of the most garbled sacks of nonsense verbiage that has been emitted in the history of human civilization."
"At no point in this rambling, incoherent response was Donald Trump even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone who clicked the video above is now dumber for having listened to it."
