Sanders Blows Up Trump Tweet To Press Him On Medicaid, Social Security Cuts

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) came to the Senate floor Wednesday with a blown-up version of one of Donald Trump’s tweets to argue that Trump should counter congressional Republicans’ proposals to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

“I think it is interesting that we listen to what Donald Trump said during the campaign,” Sanders said during a Senate debate on the repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

“This is what he asked millions of elderly people and working-class people to vote for him on. These are the principles that Donald Trump ran and won the presidency on,” Sanders said, referencing an April 2015 tweet of Trump’s printed on a sandwich board displayed behind him:

I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid. Huckabee copied me.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2015

“Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security,” Sanders later quoted Trump as saying that same month. “They want to do it on Medicare. They want to do it on Medicaid. And we can’t do it. It’s not fair to the people that have been paying in for years.”

“What Mr. Trump said is exactly right,” Sanders said later, asserting congressional Republicans did indeed want to cut the programs.

Sanders said Trump eventually either will be forced to admit he was lying on the campaign trail or, “if he was sincere,” to tell Republicans not to bother with cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

“And what we are talking about right now, let us be clear, that’s what this budget proposal is,” he said.

“I would hope that tomorrow or maybe today he could send out a tweet and tell his Republican colleagues to stop wasting their time and all of our time,” Sanders said in closing.