Former President Donald Trump once backed raising the retirement age to 70 and called for privatizing Social Security which he called a “Ponzi scheme” – two positions he has hammered Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for supporting as a former member of Congress and congressional candidate.
Trump made the comments in 2000 in a book he authored called “The America We Deserve,” when he was considering a third-party run for president as a member of the Reform Party.
Trump, his campaign and a supporting PAC have repeatedly cited votes from DeSantis in Congress for nonbinding budget resolutions that would have raised the retirement age to 70.
The campaign has also cited DeSantis’ praise of Paul Ryan’s budget plans during his 2012 congressional campaign with comments that expressed support for privatizing Social Security and Medicare – but a CNN KFile review found Trump himself also once praised Ryan on Medicare, along with the 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, without praising their specific policy proposal, which called for similar changes to Ryan’s plan.
In his book, Trump lamented big cuts the program would need without changes, and said he would consider privatization.
“The truth is undeniable, the workers of America have been forced to invest a sixth of our wages into a huge Ponzi scheme,” Trump wrote. “The solution to the Great Social Security Crisis couldn’t be more obvious: Allow every American to dedicate some portion of their payroll taxes to a personal Social Security account that they could own and invest in stocks and bonds.”
“We can also raise the age for receipt of full Social Security benefits to seventy,” he wrote.
The Trump campaign told CNN that that as president, Trump “has consistently showed he would always protect entitlements. In contrast, DeSantis has consistently voted to…
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