Like many, I was baffled at several points during last night’s presidential debate as to what Donald Trump was trying to say. He veered so off course from the questions Lester Holt posed that he seldom provided any specificity in his answers at all. In response to Hillary Clinton stating that a man who can be baited by a tweet should not have access to nuclear weapons, Trump responded as follows.

“It’s not an accurate one at all. It’s not an accurate one. So I just want to give a lot of things — and just to respond.”

What? Give a lot of what things, Trump? Use your words.

“I agree with her on one thing. The single greatest problem the world has is nuclear armament, nuclear weapons, not global warming, like you think and your — your president thinks.”

Whether you like it or not, he is your president, too, as you are a citizen of this country. Unless you’re secretly from an alien planet, which would, come to think of it, explain a lot.

“Nuclear is the single greatest threat. Just to go down the list, we defend Japan, we defend Germany, we defend South Korea, we defend Saudi Arabia, we defend countries.”

I have two problems with this. One, nuclear… weapons. You mean nuclear weapons. Secondly, “we defend countries,” is not very articulate and certainly not very specific. You’ve clearly done your research, I see.

“They do not pay us. But they should be paying us, because we are providing tremendous service and we’re losing a fortune. That’s why we’re losing — we’re losing — we lose on everything.”

He started with nuclear arms and now we’re losing everything. Have I missed something during the last hour and a half? Has there been an apocalypse outside I’m unaware of?

“I say, who makes these — we lose on everything.”

Please, read that sentence out loud to yourself. Who makes these, what?

“All I said, that it’s very possible that if they don’t pay a fair share, because this isn’t 40 years ago where we could do what we’re doing.”

If anyone can figure out what this masterpiece of a sentence means, I’m open to your analysis because I, for one, am lost. I beg you, ask a friend to read it, read it to Siri, show it to your mother. It does not make sense, in any universe, even Trump’s universe.

“We can’t defend Japan, a behemoth, selling us cars by the million…”

be·he·moth

bəˈhēməTH, bəˈhēmäTH/ noun.

1. a huge or monstrous creature.
2. something enormous, especially a big and powerful organization.

People of Japan, you have a right to be offended, or honored, I’m not sure which. The word behemoth may well be a compliment by Trump standards. What Japanese cars have to do with the question at hand, I’ll never know. But I’m glad to know we can’t defend Japan. Keep us posted, sir, on the reason why or possibly, if it’s not too much to ask, a statistic to back up this claim.