Former President Donald Trump, clarifying comments made about cutting out waste and fraud in government spending, is insisting that will never include Social Security or Medicare.
"I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare," Trump, who has clinched the GOP presidential nomination, told Breitbart News on Wednesday. "We'll have to do it elsewhere. But we're not going to do anything to hurt them."
Trump came under attack from President Joe Biden on the retirement spending issue after he told CNBC's Squawk Box" his plans about the nation's entitlement programs, which have been facing solvency problems, reports The Hill.
"There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting," he said. "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."
Biden quickly responded, promising he would oppose attempts to cut Medicare and Social Security. Further, his campaign put Trump's comment into a campaign ad to warn battleground state voters that Trump would threaten the entitlement programs.
But Trump, who has for years opposed cuts to Medicaid and Social Security, also commented during this CNBC interview he opposes the cuts and said it is Biden and Democrats who endanger the programs "because the country is weak."
"I mean, take a look outside of the stock market," he said. "We're going through hell. People are going through hell."
Biden also claimed in remarks in New Hampshire on Monday that many Republicans "want to put Social Security and Medicare back on the chopping block again," but promised to stop that from happening.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.