As we saw earlier, Trump stumbled onto the Social Security third rail, suggesting cuts. Podcaster Ben Shapiro pretty much speaks for the GOP zeitgeist and yesterday he agreed with Trump wholeheartedly: “No one in the United States should be retiring at 65 years old. Frankly, I think retirement itself is a stupid idea unless you have some sort of health problem. Everybody that I know who is— who is elderly, who has retired, is dead within five years. And if you talk to people who are elderly and they lose their purpose in life by losing their job and they stop working, things go to hell in a hand-basket real quick.”
That may be true of Shapiro’s acquaintances but it isn’t true of millions of Americans who are enjoying fulfilling retirement years. I’ve been retired for over a decade and these have been among the best years of my life, in part because I never defined myself by my job.
But by all means, that is the message Republicans candidates absolutely must take to the voters this fall. It’s who they have always been but have mostly been afraid to say. In fact when they did say it, the results were predictable. After Social Security passed in 1935, Republican hostility— they called it “government overreach” and “communism”— was very clarifying for the voters. In the 1936 election, Roosevelt beat Alf Landon 60.8% to 36.5% and won every state but 2. The Republicans lost another 15 House seats, bring their total to 88 (compared to 334 for the Democrats). In the Senate, the Republicans lost 5 more seats. Leaving them with just 17 seats, compared to the Democrats’ 75. That taught some of them to shut up about it for a while since their proposals to cut Social Security (and, later, Medicare) benefits— including increasing the retirement age— have been very unpopular with voters, particularly among older voters who rely on these programs for their financial security in retirement.
When the newly reelected George W Bush announced he had earned enough political capital to fulfill the conservative dream to partially privatize Social Security, the bottom dropped out of his national support and Republicans quickly stopped talking about it— until Paul Ryan came along in 2011 and proposed several budget plans that included significant reductions to Medicare and Social Security, including raising the retirement age and transforming Medicare into a voucher program. Voters expressed their disapproval at the polls in 2012 by reelecting Obama by 4 points, taking 8 House GOP seats and 2 of their Senate seats. After Ryan became speaker, the 2016 House election was a donnybrook for the Republicans. They lost 41 seats in a bloodbath. Control of the House flipped to Nancy Pelosi.
On Monday, the White House released a fact sheet on Social Security and Medicare based on Biden’s 2025 budget and contrasting Biden’s position with Trump’s:
Millions of Americans have been working their whole lives, paying into Social Security and Medicare with every working day, and want to know that they can count on these programs to be there when they need them. The President’s Budget extends the life of the Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund permanently and reinforces the President’s commitment to protect Social Security and work with Congress to strengthen the program for the long haul, including by asking the highest-income Americans to pay their fair share— while rejecting all proposals to cut benefits.
Social Security is the bedrock of financial security for American seniors and for millions of Americans with disabilities. As detailed in the President’s Budget, President Biden looks forward to working with Congress to protect and strengthen Social Security, based on these key principles:
No benefit cuts
Extending solvency by asking the highest-income Americans to pay their fair share
Improving financial security for seniors and people with disabilities
Ensuring that Americans can access the benefits they’ve earned
The President’s Budget extends the life of the Medicare HI trust fund indefinitely, the Medicare Office of the Chief Actuary estimates. It achieves these gains without any benefit cuts—while, in fact, lowering costs for Medicare beneficiaries—by:
Extending Medicare HI trust fund solvency permanently by requiring wealthy people to pay their fair share toward Medicare and reducing prescription drug costs
Lowering out-of-pocket costs and payments to Big Pharma
Although some Republicans are slipping back into the “entitlements” talk again, Trump has been— until this week— savvy enough to keep it to himself. In fact, last year Vaughn Hillyard and Jonathan Allen reported for NBC News that Trump is barely even using the word “Republican” anymore, let alone their toxic ideas. Practically the only time he says the word “Republican,” they wrote, is “to disparage other party luminaries... Trump advisers say the short shrift he's giving the Republican label reflects a view that he is the leader of a movement that is broader than one party.” He just put his daughter-in-law and another MAGA hack in as the co-chairs of the RNC, fired dozens of staffers and moved its operations down to West Palm Beach where he'll be able to make whatever money they collect goes to pay off his fines and defense fund.
“Fox News and [Senate GOP leader] Mitch McConnell and the Republican donors have basically signed a pledge to stop Trump at any opportunity. So, why should he be touting the Republican Party?” Steve Bannon, host of the War Room podcast and the CEO of Trump’s 2016 campaign, told NBC News. “He shouldn’t be loyal to the Republican Party. They haven’t been loyal to him— they’ve scheduled 10 primary debates to wound him.”
In essence, according to advisers and allies, Trump is returning to the anti-establishment themes of his successful 2016 bid for the presidency that rallied voters to slay the favorite totems, orthodoxies and candidates of both parties.
…“I will protect, unlike DeSanctus, Social Security and Medicare for our great seniors, defending them from both the radical left and the Paul Ryan-Republican establishment,” Trump said, referring to DeSantis by a nickname and to Ryan, the former House speaker from Wisconsin.
The former president’s early distancing from the Republican establishment is also a sign of his desire to skip past internecine primary battles and focus solely on Biden.
Trump is espousing all kinds of MAGA tropes that are even less popular than the typical Republican tropes. On Monday, NBC News also reported that he said “that one of his first acts as president if he wins in November would be <> to ‘free’ those charged and convicted<> of crimes related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. That’s a highly popular position to take with MAGAts— but not with normal people. Democrats and independents— and swing voters— hate that kind of talk. If Trump keeps playing to his base, he’s going to keep damaging his chances to win in November.
