A report by Josh Green in Bloomberg News on May 26 included a bombshell that could put Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on the defensive, if the mainstream media were to pick it up.
Buried 20 or so paragraphs into the piece, which focuses on Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus’ world of woe — and released on the day before the Memorial Day holiday — is a claim from a source who appears to be close to Speaker Paul Ryan that Donald Trump secretly plans to cut Social Security and other entitlements if he’s elected president.
The exchanged occurred when Trump met with Ryan earlier this month, expecting to be endorsed by Speaker Ryan, who was the vice presidential nominee on the ticket with Trump’s nemesis, Mitt Romney. Here’s what Josh Green reported:
The meeting was supposed to be a variation on the old Washington ritual whereby the nominee and runner-up “come together” to unify the party before the general election. Only Ryan, whose values and ideology Trump soundly defeated, wasn’t conceding. He had made a big drama about how Trump had to demonstrate fealty to the conservative cause, and evidently he thought that this would happen. (Ryan declined to be interviewed.)
It didn’t. According to a source in the room, Trump criticized Ryan’s proposed entitlement cuts as unfair and politically foolish. “From a moral standpoint, I believe in it,” Trump told Ryan. “But you also have to get elected. And there’s no way a Republican is going to beat a Democrat when the Republican is saying, ‘We’re going to cut your Social Security’ and the Democrat is saying, ‘We’re going to keep it and give you more.’?” Afterward, both sides offered platitudes, but Ryan didn’t endorse.
