Assessing Claims That Donald Trump Wants to Cut Social Security and Medicare

Robert Reich took the former president’s comments out of context.

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Donald Trump gestures to the crowd after speaking at a campaign event in Rome, Georgia, on March 9, 2024. (Photo by Elijah Nouvelage/AFP/Getty Images)

Numerous viral posts on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) have claimed that former President Donald Trump proposed cuts to Social Security and Medicare programs. “On the same day that President Biden proposed a budget that makes the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share while lowering costs for working Americans, Donald Trump said that he’d cut Social Security and Medicare,” Robert Reich, former secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton, said on Facebook. “So, on the same day President Biden released his budget—which includes tax breaks for families, lower health care costs, and higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations—Donald Trump just told CNBC he will CUT Social Security and Medicare,” reads another image by Occupy Democrats, quoting a tweet from Victor Shi, a political activist with more than 285,000 followers on Twitter. “Biden and Trump are not the same. Period.”

Trump did speak to CNBC about entitlement reform on March 11, the same day Biden released his budget proposal, but his comments were taken out of context. Trump referred primarily to cutting waste and has routinely claimed that he has no intention of curbing either Medicare or Social Security benefits.

In the interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, host Joe Kernen asked Trump about differences between his and Biden’s approach to entitlement spending. “There are stark policy differences obviously, Mr. President, but one thing that I think that at least the perception is that there’s not a whole lot of difference between what you think we should do with entitlements or non-discretionary spending and what President Biden is proposing,” Kernen said. “Have you changed your, your outlook on how to handle entitlements Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Mr. President?”

“So 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 the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements,” Trump responded. “There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do. So I don’t necessarily agree with the statement.”

President Biden quickly jumped on Trump’s remarks, responding shortly after in a Tweet that Social Security and Medicare cuts would not happen under his leadership.

Trump’s campaign pushed back, explaining that the former president was talking about cutting waste, not entitlements themselves.

Trump himself has previously argued that Biden’s policies—particularly on immigration—would damage entitlement programs. “The Biden border bill would turbocharge the continued invasion of our country, and therefore his plan would totally demolish Social Security, Medicare, medicaid, health care, and all of public education,” Trump said during a rally in Richmond earlier in the month. “Our country is being laughed at all over the world. But I will not let him [Biden] destroy Social Security. I will not let him crash Medicare.” In January 2023, Trump made a similar statement, saying that “Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security to help pay for Joe Biden’s reckless spending spree, which is more reckless than anybody’s ever done or had in the history of our country.”

The former president clarified his position further in a March 14 interview with Breitbart. “I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare,” he said. “We’ll have to do it elsewhere. But we’re not going to do anything to hurt them.”

If you have a claim you would like to see us fact check, please send us an email at factcheck@thedispatch.com. If you would like to suggest a correction to this piece or any other Dispatch article, please email corrections@thedispatch.com.

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  1. Avatar photo
    EricRemcon@gmail

    “The Biden border bill would turbocharge the continued invasion of our country, and therefore his plan would totally demolish Social Security, Medicare, …..”

    I understand that you want to be fair and call out the dishonesty of the Biden claims. I agree those claims are lies, #45 has no intention of doing anything about the coming SS & Medicare insolvency.

    BUT

    Please do not pass along his own unchecked lie in the process. In my understanding, the border compromise bill that #45 is largely responsible for quashing did not have an amnesty component. As bad as the illegal border crossings are, they are not necessarily bad for SS & Medicare unless a promise of amnesty is tucked in somewhere. Some portion of the illegals contribute to the SS & Medicare funds either due to work permit issued SS numbers or ‘borrowed’ ones. Because they are not eligible to receive benefits, it is a net gain for the SS & Medicare fund.

    As always, he also threw in a word salad of other programs that can be negatively impacted (e.g., health care, education). But your fact check is about SS & Medicare. The border is a mess. It is disgraceful that neither side will step up and implement SERIOUS solutions. But SS & Medicare are only tangentially related.

    #45 is going to demagogue the border until November, please do not help him, even accidentally.

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    1. Rawkki54

      Yes. "the theft and the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements,” Trump responded. “There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do." Does he even know how to construct a sentence?"

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