Former President Donald Trump has called his 2024 opponent Ron DeSantis a “wheelchair over the cliff kind of guy” for supporting then-Rep. Paul Ryan’s 2012 plans to partially privatize Medicare but a review of Trump’s comments by CNN’s KFile show that he supported the same plan at the same time.
Trump’s comment gives a nod to the infamous ad against Ryan from a progressive group where a Paul Ryan look-alike actor literally threw a grandma in a wheelchair over a cliff while a narrator in the ad attacked his record on entitlements.
DeSantis’ past congressional votes and support for the privatization of Medicare and Social Security are one of Trump’s most common attacks on the Florida governor, who has since distanced himself from his past support for privatization.
However, the former president enthusiastically supported the same plan, which would have partially privatized the program and critics argued turned it into a voucher system.
At the time, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney had selected Ryan as his running mate, putting Ryan’s controversial plans for entitlements front and center in the campaign. Trump argued the plan would actually strengthen the program in the end.
“In fact, it’s probably going to be better. And you’re gonna have a stronger system,” Trump said in August 2012 during an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
In a review of dozens of appearances from Trump on Fox News and CNBC after the pick of Ryan in 2012 – Trump did not criticize Ryan’s plan and only spoke positively about the congressman.
Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesperson emphasized in an email to CNN that Trump wasn’t a candidate at that time.
“President Trump wasn’t a candidate or an elected official then,” he told CNN. “When President Trump was elected and went to Washington,…
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