Trump on cybersecurity: 'I have a son. He's 10 years old. He has computers.'
Donald Trump rambles. This is what he does. Sometimes his run-on sentences are mind-warping, sometimes they're funny, and sometimes they leave audiences blinking, wondering whether their brains have momentarily lost the ability to to translate garbled sound into words.
Trump did a lot of rambling during Monday night's first debate between the two presidential nominees, but nothing was more mind-numbingly incoherent than his response to a question about cybersecurity.
Asked about who's behind recent cyber attacks on U.S. institutions and how the U.S. can fight them, Trump followed Hillary Clinton's answer by touting some of his endorsements.
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Then, at last, he began to talk cyber. He questioned who was behind a recent hack of the Democratic National Committee.
I don't think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC. She's saying Russia, Russia, Russia, but I don't -- maybe it was. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK?
Then he swerved into random attack mode, throwing a jab at the DNC and saying "under President Obama we've lost control of things that we used to have control over," without offering any specifics.
Trump swerved yet again in an answer that only spanned 10 paragraphs, this time aiming his words at the Islamic State.
"We came in with the Internet, we came up with the Internet, and I think Secretary Clinton and myself would agree very much, when you look at what ISIS is doing with the internet, they're beating us at our own game."
By "game," does he mean "internet?" They're beating us at internet?
Then he pivots another time, because why not, and here's where you may have to blink a few times.
I have a son. He's 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers, it's unbelievable. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it's hardly doable. But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing. But that's true throughout our whole governmental society. We have so many things that we have to do better, Lester, and certainly cyber is one of them.
At least we know that, should Trump become president, his youngest son will be running the administration's cybersecurity.
Colin is Mashable's US & World Reporter. He previously interned at Foreign Policy magazine and The American Prospect. Colin is a graduate from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. When he's not at Mashable, you can most likely find him eating or playing some kind of sport.
