US President Donald Trump said the federal government should pay more attention to defense funding and reduce healthcare and child care, which should be handled by state governments, CNN reported on April 2.
Trump announced this during a special Easter dinner on April 1. The video appeared briefly on the White House YouTube channel before it was deleted, but the video Save Journalist at Business Insider.
During his speech, Trump referred to a conversation with the head of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought. “I told Russell: Don’t give money to day care centers, because the United States can’t do day care centers. That should be the responsibility of the states. We can’t do day care. We’re a big country. We have 50 states. And we’re full of all kinds of other people.”
Then, as CNN noted, Trump quickly added: “We’re at war. We don’t have time for kindergarten.” The US President believes that states should raise taxes to fund kindergartens and health care.
“We can’t do day care centers, all these individual things, states can do that. That’s impossible at the federal level. We have to do one thing: military defense. We have to protect the country. But all these little things, all these little shenanigans that happened, you gotta let the states handle it, Russell,” Trump said.
Trump “spoke in his speech about the importance of stopping fraud and rooting out billions of dollars in fraud in these vital programs being perpetrated by Democratic elected officials,” White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt said April 2.
As CNN noted, Trump has talked about fraud, but his rhetoric has been primarily about who should pay for health care programs.
Donald Trump made this statement a few hours before he addressed the nation about the war with Iran. He indicated in his speech that the United States was close to victory, but he did not say when the war would end.