Former President Donald Trump on Monday suggested there is “a lot you can do in terms of cutting” Social Security and Medicare.
Trump, who previously warned Republicans against cutting popular entitlement programs, was asked by CNBC host Joe Kernen whether he had changed his view on the issue.
“It seems like something has to be done or else we’re gonna be stuck at 120 percent of debt to GDP forever,” Kernen said.
“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 bad management of entitlements,” Trump responded. “Tremendous bad management of entitlements. There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do. So I don’t necessarily agree with the statement.”
President Joe Biden fired back on social media, tweeting, “Not on my watch.”
Not on my watch. https://t.co/RAHjjUlGDa
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) March 11, 2024
Trump’s campaign sought to clarify his statement, arguing that “if you losers didn’t cut his answer short, you would know President Trump was talking about cutting waste.”
But observers were stunned by Trump’s full answer.
“The headline is obviously Trump's express support for cutting Social Security and Medicare. But it's also notable that when asked a simple policy question by a non-right wing news outlet (his first such interview in months, by the way), Trump's answer is largely gibberish,” tweeted Bharat Ramamurti, who served as deputy director of the National Economic Council under Biden.
“This answer doesn’t make any sense,” agreed Brian Klaas, a professor of global politics at University College London. “Word salad on a crucially important policy question. And yet this won’t get a big NYT headline or profile on how Trump is confused about how the government works and can’t string a coherent sentence together when asked about what he will do.”
This answer doesn’t make any sense. Word salad on a crucially important policy question. And yet this won’t get a big NYT headline or profile on how Trump is confused about how the government works and can’t string a coherent sentence together when asked about what he will do. https://t.co/wvHVwRaBUg
— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) March 11, 2024
