PALM BEACH, Florida — Former President Donald Trump told Breitbart News exclusively on Wednesday evening that he will never touch Social Security or Medicare.
Asked during a 90-minute exclusive interview — his first print interview since locking down the Republican nomination for president for a third straight election — about cutting government waste, Trump pledged to never do anything to cut Social Security or Medicare.
“I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare,” Trump said. “We’ll have to do it elsewhere. But we’re not going to do anything to hurt them.”
Trump’s general election opponent, Democrat President Joe Biden, has in recent days attacked Trump after a CNBC interview in which Trump was talking about cutting waste and fraud in government spending. Biden has twisted quotes from Trump to make it appear as though Trump supported cutting the retirement programs that Americans have come to depend on when they enter later stages of life.
But Donald Trump, in his interview with Breitbart News at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday evening, made clear he will never touch Social Security or Medicare.
“There’s so many things we can do,” Trump said. “There’s so much cutting and so much waste in so many other areas, but I’ll never do anything to hurt Social Security.”
In his CNBC interview this week, Trump had said, when asked about entitlement reforms, that he supports cutting waste and fraud — but he also made clear in that interview that he opposes cuts to Social Security and Medicare and that it is Biden and Democrats who represent a threat to these critical programs.
“So, first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting,” Trump told CNBC. “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 added in his CNBC interview that Democrat and Biden policies “end up weakening Social Security because the country is weak. I mean, take a look at outside of the stock market … We’re going through hell. People are going through hell.”
Biden twisted what Trump said to attack him and claim that Trump supports cutting Social Security. Biden’s campaign tweeted a clip, which cuts off part of the Trump quote, falsely claiming that Trump said in Biden’s campaign’s words that there “is a lot you can do in terms of cutting Social Security and Medicare.” Trump never said that, but nonetheless the Biden campaign ran with that claim — and then Biden himself tweeted: “Not on my watch.”
Then Biden launched even further false attacks on Trump on this front in New Hampshire on Monday, saying in remarks at a Granite State campaign event that “many of my Republican friends want to put Social Security and Medicare back on the chopping block again.”
“If anyone tries to cut Social Security or Medicare or raise the retirement age again, I will stop them,” Biden said in New Hampshire, adding that he thinks “Republicans will cut Social Security and Medicare to give us more tax cuts for the wealthy.”
“Even this morning, Donald Trump said cuts to Social Security and Medicare are on the table again,” Biden said Monday.
Of course, that has long been false with regard to Trump. Trump has regularly pledged to protect Social Security and Medicare and again, of course, reaffirmed that position on Wednesday evening with Breitbart News.
In December 2022, in his first interview after launching this third campaign for the White House which was conducted with Breitbart News at his Doral property in Miami, Trump also made clear that he will never cut Social Security.
“We’re not cutting Social Security,” Trump said then. “It’s very simple. It’s a simple answer. We’re not cutting Social Security.”
Trump’s position on this has never changed, and he has long supported protecting Social Security and Medicare. It is also a big reason why Trump does not get along well with old guard establishment Republicans like former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who during his time in Congress was a major proponent of cutting Social Security and Medicare. Ryan, who failed in his bid for vice president when he was Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012, was one of the least popular Republicans when he left Congress and now sits on the board of Fox Corporation, the parent company of the Fox News Channel.