Presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway insisted Friday that President Donald Trump was talking about making cuts to the national deficit, not to entitlement programs such as Social Security, when he was discussing the national economy during a Fox News town hall event Thursday night.
"He didn't say that," Conway told Fox News' Ed Henry during an "America's Newsroom" interview. "You are misquoting him. When I talked to him after [the town hall], I said there were some articles and Twitter traffic that says the following and he said no, I'm talking about cutting deficits."
During the event, held in Scranton, Pennsylvania, anchor Martha MacCallum asked the president about cuts to the deficit, telling him that critics are concerned that if "you don't cut something in entitlements, you will never really deal with the debt."
"Oh, we'll be cutting," the president replied. "We're also going to have growth like you've never seen before."
"He was not talking about cutting entitlement," said Conway. "His press secretary put out a statement last night and that's not what he was referring to. He talked about growth. He was talking about the booming economy and also talked about the deficit ... he inherited a big deficit. He made very clear the previous president exploded the deficit beyond anything that the prior presidents combined had done."
Trump also insisted, via Twitter, that he will "protect your Social Security and Medicare, just as I have for the past 3 years. Sleepy Joe Biden will destroy both in very short order, and he won't even know he's doing it!"
Conway said Trump was well received in Pennsylvania, a state he won in the 2016 election, because of his record on jobs.
"We've had 35 out of 39 months under President Trump's administration, where we've had at least 100,000 new jobs, 200,000 in each of the last couple months, and this is two months into the coronavirus," said Conway.