- In a Monday interview, Donald Trump suggested Social Security and Medicare benefits might be cut.
- The remarks sent his campaign immediately into damage control.
- Trump’s comments were a political gift that Joe Biden immediately seized upon.
Donald Trump on Monday handed President Joe Biden a gift while calling in to CNBC.
When asked how the US could cut spending and his outlook on handling entitlements like Social Security and Medicare benefits, Trump suggested cuts could be made to the programs, which offer guaranteed financial support to retired and disabled workers.
“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,” Trump told CNBC’s Joe Kernen in a rambling response to the question that touched on the stock market, oil drilling, and his administration’s response to the COVID pandemic.
He added: “I know that they’re going to end up weakening Social Security because the country is weak,” in an apparent suggestion that the Biden administration would make cuts to the program.
Trump’s campaign quickly jumped into damage-control mode, sending out a press release saying that the former president’s remarks had focused on “protecting entitlements like Social Security and Medicare” and that he “would get rid of waste and fraud.”
But Biden seized upon Trump’s remarks just as quickly, telling a crowd of voters in New Hampshire that Trump had said cuts to the programs were on the table. Biden vowed to protect the entitlements more than 70 million Americans rely on.
“I won’t cut Social Security and I won’t cut Medicare,” Biden said, per CNN, adding: “I will protect and strengthen Social Security, Medicare and make the wealthy begin to pay their fair share.”
Representatives for Trump didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Source: I N S I D E R
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