Former President Donald Trump is cleaning up comments he made last week, in which he seemingly entertained the idea of cutting Social Security.
In an interview with Breitbart News, published on Thursday, Trump insisted he would not touch the social insurance program, nor would he pursue cuts to Medicare.
“I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare,” Trump told the site. “We’ll have to do it elsewhere. But we’re not going to do anything to hurt them.”
Trump has long sought to distance himself from other Republicans by pledging fidelity to entitlement programs, convinced that they present a huge political tripwire for his party. He criticized then-Rep. Paul Ryan during the Barack Obama era for pushing austerity budgets. And this year he urged Republicans not to demand entitlement reforms in exchange for lifting the nation’s debt ceiling.
But in an interview with CNBC last week, he was pressed as to whether he’d revisit that position.
“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,” he replied.
The Biden campaign immediately jumped on the remarks as proof that Trump had opened the door to slashing Social Security. The president criticized Trump at an event hours after the CNBC interview aired. And he is expected to do the same at a rally in Michigan on Thursday.
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