Donald Trump's Unforced Error

For decades, there was one tried-and-true staple of presidential campaigns: The Democratic nominee would whack the Republican on proposals to reform, cut or privatize Social Security and other entitlements and reap the political rewards.

In the most evocative example of the genre, a 2012 attack ad from a progressive advocacy group showed a character strongly resembling Paul Ryan literally pushing a grandmother in a wheelchair off a cliff.

Four years later, Donald Trump changed the calculus. After watching Republicans fight losing battles over entitlement reform — in 2008, for example, Barack Obama’s campaign outspent John McCain on the issue by a factor of 150 to 1 — Trump decided to avoid the political turkey shoot entirely.

“I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” Trump said in Iowa in 2015.

But now, thanks to an unforced error, Trump has effectively opened the 2024 general election campaign with a return to the third rail he sought to abandon almost a decade ago. Asked in a CNBC interview Monday whether he’d changed his outlook on how to handle entitlements, Trump argued in a word salad-heavy answer that “there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and also the theft and the bad management of entitlements.”

It’s not obvious from his answer whether he’s had a material change of heart on Social Security, because it’s not obvious what he means at all. In early 2020 he made a similar comment that he quickly walked back, that he would “at some point” look at cutting entitlements; nothing came of it. But this time, his campaign immediately recognized he had stepped on a land mine. A campaign spokesperson tried some cleanup on Monday, arguing that Trump will “continue to strongly protect Social Security and Medicare in his second term.”

By then, though, it was too late. Trump suddenly found himself on the defensive, in the position so many prior GOP nominees have been in. He had given up the tactical advantage he had used to swamp his GOP rivals in the 2016 primary, back when he recognized that, when it came to entitlement reform, the only winning move is not to play.

At the time, he hammered Ben Carson on wanting to get rid of Medicare and said that Paul Ryan had “been so anti-Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.”

He followed the same tack in his current primary campaign, insisting that Social Security cuts are off the table. During a January rally in New Hampshire, Trump went so far as to attack Nikki Haley as a return to the days when the GOP establishment had its eye on entitlement cuts.

“[She] supported Paul Ryan’s plan to destroy Medicare … Do you remember that?” Trump said in the run-up to the first-in-the-nation primary. “That was Paul Ryan throwing granny off the cliff. We’re not doing that.”

In case there were still any lingering doubts about where he stands, a section of his campaign website underscored his message. “Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security,” it reads.

All of that is out the window now. Trump’s comments on cutting entitlement spending sounded the starting gun on a line of attack that Trump has never really had to contend with.

Recognizing the opportunity, the Biden campaign today released a video of the president watching Trump’s answer, shaking his head, and turning to the camera to say, “this man has no idea what he’s talking about. Over my dead body will he cut Social Security so he can give tax breaks to the super wealthy … This is worth the fight all by itself.”

The entitlement fight isn’t the only ghost of past elections that has inconveniently returned. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, he has largely avoided articulating a clear position — his stance seems to be coalescing around support for a 15-week or 16-week national ban.

But his strategic ambiguity isn’t sustainable in an election where abortion rights are center stage. This isn’t 2016, when he had yet to appoint three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and his Republican primary rivals were attacking him for his formerly pro-choice stance.

In 2024, he owns Dobbs. And, thanks to his recent remarks, Democrats will make sure he owns the longstanding Republican position on entitlement reform. It’s a rough, but somehow familiar, way to kick off the general election.