Trump: "We'll be cutting" entitlement programs. White House: He didn't really mean that.

Following his Fox News town hall, Stephanie Grisham and Kellyanne Conway denied that Trump said what he said.

By Aaron Rupar@atrupar Mar 6, 2020, 2:00pm EST

During his Fox News town hall on Thursday night, President Donald Trump said he planned to propose cuts to government benefit programs like Medicare and Social Security in his second term. The White House spent the hours that followed trying to walk those comments back.

Trump’s remarks came in the context of a discussion about the national debt, which has ballooned to historic levels under his presidency despite his 2016 campaign promise to eliminate it entirely. After Trump claimed that cutting the debt would be a focus of his second term, host Martha MacCallum pointed out that “if you don’t cut something in entitlements, you’ll never really deal with the debt.”

But before “you’ll never really deal with the debt” even escaped MacCallum’s lips, Trump interjected to agree with the first part of her statement — that cuts to programs like Social Security and Medicare will be necessary to get the debt under control.

“Oh, we’ll be cutting,” he said. “We’re also going to have growth like you’ve never seen before.”

Watch for yourself:

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/6/21168038/trump-on-entitlements-fox-news-town-hall


NEVER TRUMP 2020