- In a Monday interview, Donald Trump suggested cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits.
- The remarks sent his campaign immediately into damage control to retract the comments.
- Trump’s comments were a political gift that Joe Biden immediately seized upon.
Donald Trump on Monday unintentionally handed President Joe Biden a gift while speaking to CNBC.
When asked how the country could cut discretionary 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 Kernan 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 immediately jumped into damage control mode, sending out a press release shortly after his remarks, saying the former President’s remarks focused on “protecting entitlements like Social Security and Medicare” and 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 the former President had said cuts to the programs were on the table. Biden vowed to protect the entitlements more than 70 million Americans rely on.
“I’m never gonna allow that to happen,” CNN reported Biden said. “I won’t cut Social Security and I won’t cut Medicare. … I will protect and strengthen Social Security, Medicare and make the wealthy begin to pay their fair share.”
Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
