Chris LaCivita, a top adviser to President Donald Trump, insists that Elon Musk will not cut Social Security in his pursuit to limit government because Musk is “not president” and therefore “doesn’t get to make those decisions.”
LaCivita sat down for a 33-minute interview on an episode of the Politico podcast Deep Dive released Friday.
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“Now they’re not going to cut Social Security,” he said. “They’re not going to cut Medicaid, they are just not. That’s just fearmongering from the Left.”
Host Dasha Burns cut in to press him on Musk’s interview with Larry Kudlow on Monday, in which Musk suggested he would analyze spending within Social Security and other programs. He previously called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and said the benefits programs are used as a “gigantic magnet to attract illegal immigrants and have them stay in the country.”
“He’s not president,” LaCivita said. “He’s not president. He doesn’t get to make those decisions.”
When asked why Musk said that, the Trump adviser responded, “I don’t know. I don’t speak for him. He says whatever he says, but the fact of the matter is there’s a House, there’s a Senate.”
LaCivita and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles were Trump’s campaign managers during his 2024 presidential bid. Both have been given credit for his electoral victory.
Trump has battled accusations that he will cut critical social programs that provide money to seniors and other eligible recipients. The White House issued a memorandum on Tuesday denying that Musk wants to cut Social Security, instead pointing to this direct quote from the Department of Government Efficiency leader:
“The waste and fraud in entitlement spending, which is most of the federal spending is entitlements, so, that’s, like, the big one to eliminate. That’s the sort of half-trillion, maybe [$600 billion to] $700 billion a year.”
The memo insists that Trump will not cut benefits, instead focusing on items such as overpayments. “The Trump administration will not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits,” White House officials said in a press release. “President Trump himself has said it (over and over and over again).”
While benefits have not been cut, the Social Security Administration plans to cut its workforce by around 12% through resignations and a reduction-in-force plan. Other cuts include shuttering the SSA’s Office of Transformation, which was tasked with modernizing the agency.
If Musk does cut Social Security benefits, he is likely to receive heavy backlash from both Democrats and Republicans. Democrats are already preparing as if it is inevitable.
“Elon Musk confirmed what many of us had been warning about for a long time: Republicans are getting ready to gut Social Security and Medicare,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on the Senate floor.
“The richest man on Earth repeated, again, a bevy of lies that entitlement programs, [which] tens of millions of people rely on, are riddled with fraud and abuse,” Schumer said. “That’s a pretext to slashing them. But it’s false.”
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House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who is dealing with the possibility of a government shutdown, assured voters that a continuing resolution going through Congress will not cut benefits.
Democrats said, according to Johnson, “‘Republicans have decided to introduce a partisan continuing resolution that threatens to cut funding for healthcare, nutritional assistance, and veterans benefits through the end of the year.’ Every single word of that is a lie. Every single word, they just made it up. They didn’t read the bill. It’s nonsense. People are not buying this.”