“There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting,” Trump said.
On Monday, former President Donald Trump, now a presumptive nominee for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination, gave the impression of advising him to open up to the idea of “slashing” Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, an idea his advisers temporarily tried. Biden’s crusade has tried to capitalize.
In an interview with CNBC host Joe Kernen, Trump asked if he had replaced his “vision of how to manage rights,” particularly those three shows.
“There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements — in terms of cutting — and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements,” Trump responded.
Republicans — and Trump himself — have floated the concept of “slashing” those systems in the past, but those proposals are incredibly unpopular because many Americans rely on welfare systems when they reach retirement age. or when they face monetary difficulties.
President Joe Biden was quick to share the corresponding clip of the interview on his social media page, with a caption that read: “Not on my watch. “
Soon after, Trump’s crossover team tried to limit the damage, with a spokesperson saying the Republican presidential nominee was “clearly talking about cutting rights, not rights. “
Yet there are two problems with that presumption. First, the very fact that a statement to clarify Trump’s words was needed at all suggests that Trump’s words weren’t as “clear” as his campaign claims them to be. Second, Trump stated “in terms of cutting” the programs aside from dealing with “bad management” of them.
Trump has proposed cuts to those systems before, adding in 2020, when he was president, when he intended to cut spending on Medicaid by $1. 5 trillion, Social Security by $25 billion and Medicare by $845 billion. As a component of this proposal, the Trump White House administration attempted to justify the cuts by claiming that they generally referred to fearful spending; however, a report by Vox noted that the proposed cuts were not just fearful.
“With respect to Trump’s proposed adjustments to Medicaid and Social Security, the intent is unequivocal: they are benefit cuts,” the report said at the time.
In fact, Trump “has planned cuts to Social Security and Medicare every single year of his presidency,” noted political commentator Dan Pfeiffer. “Monday’s comment also wasn’t the first time he’s expressed interest in cutting Social Security and Medicare. “
Polls show Americans need to spend more, not less, on those systems. In fact, a Data for Progress poll that preceded Biden’s State of the Union address this month found that expanding those systems was popular.
Eighty-eight percent of voters backed expanding the Medicare provision enacted by Biden during his first term to allow the program to negotiate the cost of popular prescription drugs. On Social Security, 78 percent supported increasing taxes on billionaires in order to increase the number of benefits that program allotted, while 76 percent supported the idea of providing subsidized health insurance in states that haven’t yet expanded Medicaid coverage.
Chris Walker is a news editor at Truthout and was born in Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on national and local issues since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing existing issues and their effect on the American people. He can be found on most social media platforms under the name @thatchriswalker.