Quote Originally Posted by dilettante View Post
Contrast this with the unfounded and barely theoretical "Trump will eliminate Social Security" that the "sleep your way to the top" campaign kept spouting.
Wow, you must have your rake deep in the muck to dig up a conspiracy theory like that one.

I don't think Trump will touch Social Security. The people around him would most certainly like to. That has been a goal for decades...well, it's actually been a goal since Social Security was established. The last one to seriously try was W Bush, but it's so massively unpopular that nobody succeeds. That's also why I don't think Trump will do it. He doesn't care, but he does know that would destroy the one thing he does care about: His name.

It's not barely theoretical, though. There's this from one article fact checking project 2025 (which does not call for cuts to Social Security)

Trump said about a half-dozen times that he’s open to major overhauls of Social Security, including cuts and privatization. More recently, in a March 2024 CNBC interview, Trump said of entitlement programs such as Social Security, “There’s a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting.” However, he quickly walked that statement back, and his CNBC comment stands at odds with essentially everything else Trump has said during the 2024 presidential campaign.
So, yes, he's said he might cut it, but then he backtracked, and has been fairly consistent that he won't. That fits him perfectly. The people around him would love to cut it, as they have for so long, and he sways towards them...but then he realizes how unpopular it would be and he sways the other way. He's a ship without a keel.