Donald Trump on Monday handed President Joe Biden a gift while calling in to CNBC.
When asked how the US could cut spending and his outlook on handling entitlements like Social Security and Medicare benefits, Trump suggested cuts could be made to the programs, which offer guaranteed financial support to retired and disabled workers.
"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. There's tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do," Trump told CNBC's Joe Kernen in a rambling response to the question that touched on the stock market, oil drilling, and his administration's response to the COVID pandemic.
He added: "I know that they're going to end up weakening Social Security because the country is weak," in an apparent suggestion that the Biden administration would make cuts to the program.
Trump's campaign quickly jumped into damage-control mode, sending out a press release saying that the former president's remarks had focused on "protecting entitlements like Social Security and Medicare" and that he "would get rid of waste and fraud."
But Biden seized upon Trump's remarks just as quickly, telling a crowd of voters in New Hampshire that Trump had said cuts to the programs were on the table. Biden vowed to protect the entitlements more than 70 million Americans rely on.
"I won't cut Social Security and I won't cut Medicare," Biden said, per CNN, adding: "I will protect and strengthen Social Security, Medicare and make the wealthy begin to pay their fair share."
A representative for the Trump campaign told Business Insider in an emailed statement that the former president "delivered on his promise to protect Social Security and Medicare in his first term" and "will continue to strongly protect Social Security and Medicare in his second term."
"The only candidate who poses a threat to Social Security and Medicare is Joe Biden — whose mass invasion of millions of illegal aliens will, if Biden allows them to stay, cause Social Security and Medicare to collapse," Karoline Leavitt, the national press secretary for the Trump campaign told BI.
Social Security and Medicare have long been contentious issues across both parties. Notably, Trump had previously urged Republican lawmakers to keep their hands off of the programs during the fight to raise the debt ceiling last year, saying that "under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security."
"Cut waste, fraud and abuse everywhere that we can find it and there is plenty, there's plenty of it," he continued. "But do not cut the benefits our seniors worked for and paid for their entire lives. Save Social Security, don't destroy it."
And with so many retirees relying on the benefits, any cuts to the program could have a significant impact on their financial outlook. As BI previously reported, about 13% of retirees are in poverty, and the majority of Americans over the age of 65 are living on $30,000 or less a year.
Additionally, a recent report from Sen. Bernie Sanders found that without Social Security income, about 38% of Americans in the same age group would be living in poverty, based on data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Biden vowed to protect Americans from any cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his budget proposal released on Monday, stating that the president will "reject any efforts to cut or undermine the Medicare or Social Security benefits that seniors and people with disabilities have earned and paid into their entire working lives."
Correction: March 12, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated the question that Joe Kernen asked Donald Trump. Kernen asked whether Trump might cut spending involving entitlements, which are examples of mandatory government spending, not discretionary spending. The story also misspelled Kernen's surname.
