Former President Donald Trump has vowed he will “never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare” clarifying his stance on the programs after he elicited pushback from his political opponents with other recent comments about entitlement programs.
Sitting down for an interview with Breitbart News on Wednesday, President Trump indicated he is not considering cutting funding for Social Security or Medicare as a way to address the growing U.S. national debt if he returns to the White House.
“I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare,” the former president and presumptive 2024 Republican nominee told Breitbart. “We’ll have to do it elsewhere. But we’re not going to do anything to hurt them.”
The former president insisted there are “many things we can do” to address the national debt and wasteful spending within the U.S. government, but insisted “I’ll never do anything to hurt Social Security.”
President Trump’s comments to Breitbart News come as a clarification as he faces attacks over remarks he made about entitlement programs and spending cuts during an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” program on Monday. CNBC host Joe Kernan began the particular exchange by asking President Trump to contrast his positions on entitlements and discretionary spending against those of incumbent Democrat President Joe Biden, the incumbent Democrat.
“It’s almost a third rail of politics. And we’ve got to what a $33, $34 trillion total debt built up and very little we can do in terms of cutting spending. Discretionary is not going to help,” CNBC host Joe Kernen said during the Monday exchange. “Have you changed your outlook on how to handle entitlements Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Mr. President? Seems like something has to be done, or else we’re going to be stuck at 120 percent of debt to GDP forever.”
“So first of all, 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, tremendous bad management of entitlements. There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do,” President Trump replied. “So I don’t necessarily agree with the statement. I know that they’re going to end up weakening social security because the country is weak.”
Biden Camp Targets Trump Over Soundbite
Shortly after President Trump’s “Squawk Box” interview, President Biden’s campaign team began circulating a shortened soundbite of the exchange on social media, with the caption “Trump: There is a lot you can do in terms of cutting Social Security and Medicare.”
President Biden reshared his campaign’s soundbite of the CNBC interview on the X social media platform, along with his own caption, “Not on my watch.”
The Biden campaign also cut a campaign ad off of the soundbite, juxtaposing the former president’s remarks about entitlements with the incumbent president’s remarks during his recent State of the Union address in which he told Congress, “If anyone here tries to cut Social Security or Medicare or raise the retirement age, I will stop you.”
The Trump campaign team has insisted their counterparts in the Biden campaign have twisted and misrepresented President Trump’s remarks.
“If you losers didn’t cut his answer short, you would know President Trump was talking about cutting waste,” TrumpWarRoom, a Trump campaign-affiliated X account, said on Monday, minutes after the Biden team shared its soundbite of the interview.
The TrumpWarRoom account has also shared a clip of Joe Biden during his time as a senator, appearing to argue in favor of freezing federal spending on a variety of programs, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, during a 1995 speech.