Opinion

Trump’s Coming for Your Granny’s Health Care

THE NEW ABNORMAL

There are multiple issues encircling Donald Trump at any given moment—but there’s one in particular that should directly affect how people vote.

opinion
A photo illustration of Donald Trump over shredded Social Security cards.
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty

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Donald Trump may generate daily headlines with his bombastic statements and myriad legal troubles, but of all the important 2024 election-related issues worth discussing there is one in particular that deserves highlighting, according to The New Abnormal co-host Andy Levy.

The Trump campaign was in full damage control last week after the former president called in to CNBC and suggested making cuts from Medicare and Social Security, which offer financial care to retired Americans or those with a disability.

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“There is 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,” Trump told CNBC’s Joe Kernen.

While the Trump campaign issued a statement explaining Trump’s remarks meant he “would get rid of waste and fraud,” Levy isn’t buying it.

“He’s tried to backtrack from that. But it is very clear that as with every other policy that Trump wants, he wants to benefit the rich and harm the middle class and harm poorer people,” Levy said.

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Then, Justin Baragona, a senior media reporter at The Daily Beast, joins the show to discuss one of Trump’s latest problematic comments, this time at an Ohio rally over the weekend during which the former president declared there will be a “bloodbath”—for the auto industry—if he is not elected in November.

“He does have a habit of using this kind of violent rhetoric,” Baragona explains. “Even when he was first inaugurated, we all know about the American carnage speech… he loves doing this kind of stuff.”

Plus! Shannon Vavra, a national security reporter for The Daily Beast, joins the program to discuss her latest piece, The Sloppy Russian Schemers Impersonating Top U.S. Officials, and explain how online disinformation has proliferated in recent months.

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