Former President Trump recently addressed his previous remarks regarding potential changes to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare in a new interview. He aimed to provide further clarification on his stance and the approach he believes should be taken when considering adjustments to these programs.
“I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare,” Trump told Breitbart News on Wednesday. “We’ll have to do it elsewhere. But we’re not going to do anything to hurt them.”
“There’s so many things we can do,” Trump added. “There’s so much cutting and so much waste in so many other areas, but I’ll never do anything to hurt Social Security.”
Trump’s comments come after he was chastised by President Biden for a Monday interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” in which he was asked how he would resolve long-term solvency difficulties with entitlement programs.
“So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting,” he remarked. “And in terms of, also, the theft and the bad management of entitlements—tudorious bad management of entitlements—tthere’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do.”
Biden instantly jumped on those remarks, vowing to reject any attempts to reduce Social Security or Medicare. His campaign promptly turned Trump’s remarks into an advertisement warning voters in battleground states that the former president and probable Republican nominee would jeopardize entitlement services.
Trump has been adamant that Republicans should not alter Social Security or Medicare, defying GOP orthodoxy and some primary rivals who believed that changes, such as raising the retirement age, were required to maintain the programs’ long-term viability.
However, as president, each of Trump’s White House budget proposals contained cutbacks to Social Security and Medicare.
The Republicans’ budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year contained provisions aimed at increasing Medicaid work requirements, decreasing annual government spending, and targeting economic policies established when Democrats previously controlled both chambers of Congress.
