Trump Plans To Minimize Medicare and Social Safety?

Starting in March 2024, Democrats claimed that former U.S. President Donald Trump had vowed to chop Medicare and Social Safety ought to he be reelected president in November 2024. On March 12, 2024, California Gov. Gavin Newsom shared a 21-second clip on TikTok from an interview Trump gave on CNBC the day earlier than:

After President Joe Biden deserted his plans for reelection and Vice President Kamala Harris grew to become the presumptive nominee, she repeated the declare throughout a July 30, 2024, rally in Atlanta:

Twelve minutes into her speech, she talked about Project 2025, a proposed conservative blueprint for a future Republican administration. “Undertaking 2025 is a plan to weaken the center class, be clear,” Harris mentioned. “And Donald Trump intends to chop Social Safety and Medicare.”

It’s true that Trump evoked the concept of chopping entitlements throughout his interview with CNBC. Right here what he mentioned in regards to the subject, in full:

So, to start with, there’s a lot you are able to do by way of entitlements, by way of chopping and by way of additionally the theft and the dangerous administration of entitlements. Large dangerous administration of entitlements. Large quantities of issues — numbers of issues you are able to do.

It was not the primary time he had introduced up that concept. He did it a number of occasions in 2020 throughout his failed marketing campaign for reelection. Throughout a town hall on Fox News in March 2020, right here was his response to the interviewer:

Martha MacCallum: However should you do not minimize one thing in entitlements, you may by no means actually take care of that.

Donald Trump: Nicely, we’ll be chopping, however we’re additionally going to have development such as you’ve by no means had earlier than. 

It is usually true that each of the budgets the Trump administration submitted whereas within the White Home proposed cuts each to Medicare and Social Safety, although none of those cuts handed in Congress.

Nevertheless, the Republican platform for a second Trump presidency explicitly mentioned the celebration will shield Medicare and Social Safety. Page 16 reads:

President Trump has made completely clear that he won’t minimize one penny from Medicare or Social Safety. American Residents work arduous their complete lives, contributing to Social Safety and Medicare.

Three days after Trump made these feedback on CNBC, he spoke to Breitbart, the far-right information website, confirming the platform’s promise. “I’ll by no means do something that can jeopardize or harm Social Safety or Medicare,” he mentioned. “We’ll must do it elsewhere. However we’re not going to do something to harm them.”

The promise seems on a separate a part of the Trump marketing campaign web site. The web page exhibits a video wherein Trump repeats the companies must be protected. “Certainly not ought to Republicans vote to chop a single penny from Medicare or Social Safety,” he mentioned.

We due to this fact deem the declare a mix of true and false.

Sources