Trump pledges to 'never do anything' that could damage social security or medicare

Former President Donald Trump said he plans on cutting government waste, but he pledged to never do anything that could damage Social Security or Medicare.

"I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare," Trump said Wednesday during an interview with Breitbart News. 

Trump said there are "so many things we can do" to trim government waste in other areas, and he has no intention of harming entitlement programs for senior citizens.

"We’ll have to do it elsewhere. But we’re not going to do anything to hurt them," Trump also said.

"There’s so much cutting and so much waste in so many other areas, but I’ll never do anything to hurt Social Security."

Trump's comments come after his 2024 opponent, President Joe Biden, on Monday accused Trump of saying, "cuts to Social Security and Medicare are on the table." 

Biden then paraphrased Trump's comments that he made on CNBC hours earlier, saying Trump, "said, quote, 'There is a lot you can do in terms of cutting.  Tremendous amount of things you can cut.' Let me be precise: 'Tremendous amount of things you can do,' not 'cut.' He said, 'I will…' — and — but the bottom line is, he’s still at it."

Trump's actual remarks on CNBC were: "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 also said during Monday's interview that Democrats would "end up weakening Social Security because the country is weak."

The Biden campaign took that interview clip and then captioned it, "Trump: There is a lot you can do in terms of cutting Social Security and Medicare," even though he did not say he would cut those programs.

Trump has said multiple times that he supports Medicare and Social Security.

"Under no circumstances will we allow anyone to cut Medicare or Social Security for our nation’s seniors," he said last month.

Entitlement programs, including Medicaid, welfare and housing assistance, make up two-thirds of federal spending, per the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank.

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