It looks like President Donald Trump is going back on a major campaign promise, and it is surprising no one who is familiar with his record. At a private Easter lunch at the White House on Wednesday, April 1, Trump reportedly told attendees that Medicaid, Medicare, and day care were simply too costly for the federal government to handle.
“We’re a big country,” Trump said. “We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We’re fighting wars. It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these things.”
That is a stunning shift for a president who spent much of the 2024 campaign season promising to protect these very programs. During that race, Trump told voters his administration would help reduce the cost of child care and promised to fully fund Medicaid and Medicare. Now, with the midterm elections fast approaching in November, he is adjusting that major promise in real time.
Republicans in Congress have already moved in the same direction. Instead of protecting these programs, they have quietly slashed Medicaid funding through the congressional budget, with estimates suggesting the cuts could reduce federal Medicaid spending by over $900 billion over the next decade. There is no serious plan on the table to make child care more affordable for working families.
What makes this even harder to ignore is where the money is actually going. The Iran war is costing American taxpayers approximately $1 billion a day, a conflict that was never formally approved by Congress. For all the “America First” rhetoric, the administration appears far more interested in funding an overseas military operation than in keeping promises made to its own voters.
Trump’s history with the truth is, of course, well documented. Teams of fact-checkers have spent years tracking the gap between what he says and what he does. Still, it stings that millions of Americans voted for him specifically because they believed he would fix the economy and make everyday life more affordable. That trust is now being tested in a very public way.
The CNN poll tells the story clearly. Trump’s approval rating on the economy has dropped to a career-low 31%, with roughly two-thirds of Americans saying his policies have made economic conditions worse. His overall approval sits at just 35%, one point off his all-time low.
The Iran war is a big part of that slide. An NBC News poll found that the majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s decision to engage militarily in Iran, with most independents saying the US should not have taken that action at all. Even a slice of Republicans share that view, which is notable given how loyal the party’s base has been to him.
Meanwhile, gas prices have climbed above $4 per gallon in the wake of the Iran conflict, and 63% of Americans say the higher costs at the pump are causing real financial hardship in their households. That is the kind of number that follows a party into election day.
For Trump to stand in front of a room full of people and say the government cannot afford to fund health care for seniors or child care for working parents, while burning through a billion dollars a day on a war most Americans oppose, is a remarkable contradiction. He holds the power to change these priorities. He is choosing not to.
And the Medicaid cuts are not the only broken promise on the list. The war in Ukraine is still going, despite his pledge to end it. The federal government is still not covering in vitro fertilization treatments. Energy bills have gone up, not down. The national debt continues to grow. Affordability, the central issue of his 2024 campaign, remains out of reach for most families.
The only area where the administration has shown real consistency is in targeting marginalized communities. Immigrants and LGBTQ+ Americans have faced a sustained wave of policy attacks, but that focus has done nothing to bring down grocery bills or lower gas prices for the average household.
Democrats have a genuine opening here, and they need to use it. They should be running directly at Trump’s broken promises, showing voters what a real plan for affordable child care looks like and making clear that seniors’ health care benefits deserve protection. The midterm elections this November represent a chance to course correct.
With Trump’s approval at historic lows and the cost of living still squeezing families across the country, a blue wave is within reach. But Democrats will need to earn it by being specific, bold, and relentless about what they plan to do differently. This November is theirs to win, or lose.
