Donald Trump’s campaign tried to clean up comments Monday in which it appeared the likely Republican presidential nominee had suggested he was open to cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. 

In an interview Monday morning on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Trump said, “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements — in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and bad management of entitlements.”

He did not go into detail about his plans.

Democrats quickly seized on the former president’s comments. 

President Joe Biden posted on X, formerly Twitter: “Not on my watch.” His campaign later released a new advertisement highlighting Trump's comments.

"No, Mr. Trump. At a time when one out of four seniors are struggling to survive on less than $15,000 a year and nearly half of older workers have no retirement savings, our job is not to cut Social Security and Medicare," said Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in a statement released by Biden's campaign. "Our job must be to expand these programs so that every senior can retire with the dignity and respect they deserve. And the way to do that is by demanding that the wealthiest people in America pay their fair share of taxes, not giving them another massive tax break as Trump has proposed.”

"Every American senior needs to know that Donald Trump just renewed his vow to cut Social Security and Medicare if he gets back to the White House," said Richard Fiesta, Executive Director at the Alliance for Retired Americans, in a statement shared by the Biden-Harris campaign. "President Biden will stop anyone who tries to cut Social Security and Medicare, and he will strengthen these programs by making sure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share. Older Americans earned their Social Security and Medicare benefits after a lifetime of work and will not support any politician who tries to take those benefits away."

Biden’s remark came on the same day he introduced his 2025 fiscal year budget that called for protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Alex Floyd, rapid response director for the Democratic National Committee, issued a statement saying, “If you’re surprised by Donald Trump once again calling to cut Social Security and Medicare, you haven’t been paying attention: Trump has a long record of pushing to gut these critical earned benefits for millions of Americans, including proposing cuts every single year he was in office.”

Despite that Trump’s wording seemed to present cuts and waste measures as two separate solutions, his campaign accused others of distorting his answer, writing on X, “If you losers didn’t cut his answer short, you would know President Trump was talking about cutting waste.”

Over his current run for president, Trump has attacked former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, candidates who have since suspended their campaigns, for supporting Social Security reforms that would include raising the retirement age. 

Trump’s campaign website says he “will always protect Medicare, Social Security, and patients with pre-existing conditions.”

But in a 2000 book he wrote, “The America We Deserve,” Trump himself said he supported raising the retirement age to 70 and called for privatizing Social Security.

Also in the CNBC interview, Trump defended his plan to impose a 10% across-the-board tariff on foreign imports.

“I'm a big believer in tariffs. … I fully believe in them economically when you're being taken advantage of by other countries,” he said.

The American Action Forum, a center-right policy think tank, estimates the tariffs would lead to the U.S. economy shrinking and consumers being worse off. 

“They're wrong,” Trump told CNBC. “It wouldn’t distort international trade. It would bring it back to the United States.

“China is right now our boss,” he added. “They are the boss of the United States, almost like we're a subsidiary of China.”

Asked about an estimate by The Economist that the tariffs would cost each American household an average of $2,000 a year, Trump said tax cuts could offset that.

He acknowledge China might impose retaliatory tariffs that would make it more difficult for American companies to do business there. 

“That's OK,” he said. “Yeah, sure, they might do that. But you know what? They didn’t do it with me.”

Trump also further signaled a softening of his position on TikTok. As president, he sought a ban of the popular social media app in the United States, citing security concerns related to the TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance. His executive order was blocked by the courts after TikTok sued.

Trump said Monday he now fears a TikTok ban would “make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with the media.”

The former president expressed a debunked claim that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Zuckerberg and his wife donated $400 million to two nonprofit groups to help various government election offices transition to mail voting amid the COVID-19 pandemic, The Associated Press reported.

Facebook declined to comment Monday on Trump’s remarks.

A House committee last week unanimously approved a bipartisan bill that would require ByteDance to divest from TikTok and other applications it owns within six months of the bill’s enactment in order to avoid a nationwide ban. 

Trump met recently with Jeff Yass, a Republican megadonor who reportedly owns a $33 billion stake in TikTok. 

Asked about how the timing of the meeting is raising questions that Trump was “paid off” to change his position on TikTok, Trump insisted he met with Yass and his wife for “a few minutes” and that Yass “never mentioned TikTok.” 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.