Trump Mentions Cutting Entitlements, and Biden Pounces

After former President Donald J. Trump appeared to suggest he was open to cutting federal entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, President Biden immediately seized on the comments, saying, “Not on my watch.”

Mr. Biden, as he gears up for a general election rematch against Mr. Trump, has been eager to highlight his promise not to touch Social Security or Medicare. He has argued that Republicans, led by Mr. Trump, would strip away those benefits. But in a sign of the issue’s political potency, Mr. Trump’s campaign quickly sought to clarify that Americans who rely on the programs do not need to worry.

In an interview that aired Monday on CNBC, Mr. Trump, when asked whether he had changed his stance on altering those programs in order to rein in the national debt, said that there was “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.”

But he also appeared to disagree with the premise of the question, which posited that something had to be done about the programs’ drag on the national debt.

“So I don’t necessarily agree with the statement,” Mr. Trump said.

Still, the White House was quick to respond.

“Cutting the Medicare and Social Security benefits that Americans have paid to earn their whole lives, only to make room for yet more unaffordable, trickle-down tax giveaways to the super wealthy, is exactly backwards,” Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said.