CNN's Jake Tapper shreds Rick Scott for twisting his words to falsely claim Biden cut Medicare
Confronted in an interview with CNN's Kaitlan Collins about his plan to sunset Social Security and Medicare — which Biden assailed in his State of the Union Address and which Republicans are falsely claiming was not true — Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) deflected and used a quote from CNN's Jake Tapper to try to claim that President Joe Biden also made cuts to Medicare.
On Thursday, a bemused Tapper revealed that Scott was taking his words out of context.
"You interviewed Senator Scott about his proposal, about the fact he did, in Rescue America, call for all federal legislation to sunset after five years and then it could be brought back up if Congress chooses to do so," Tapper told Collins. "Then he started saying that Democrats tried to cut Medicare spending. You pointed out what he was talking about was not a cut. It was allowing Medicare to negotiate for cheaper drugs, and then he tried to use something I said — I was very surprised by this — back in 2017 as his defense to that. Take a listen to this little excerpt."
"Okay, Kaitlan, let me just read you something Jake Tapper said," said Scott. "This is back when Republicans were proposing reducing the cost of Medicaid. He said -- Jake Tapper said, 'I know the Trump Administration is excited that Medicaid will go back to the states where they have more control and can experiment and be more efficient, but without question, $880 billion is a cut."
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"So, he didn't include the quote where I talked about that the cut was analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office. Here's what I actually said back in 2017," said Tapper, rolling the clip. "So the context here is I was quoting the CBO on its analysis for a proposal from Medicaid, and I was asking the Health and Human Services secretary, Tom Price, how that cut as, defined by CBO, didn't violate Trump's campaign promise to never make such a cut."
"Yeah, and really the issue here that it's a separate matter, Jake," said Collins. "It's what was most confusing to me as we were talking about this ... what is happening here in the Inflation Reduction Act is that they reduced drug prices. Basically the government can actually negotiate these drug prices, so basically that's saving them money. And reducing spending is not the same as reducing drug prices. It makes the provision more beneficial to those Medicare recipients. That was beyond the point of what the interview was, which was to talk about his plan that he proposed, and that he told me this morning, he does not believe is a mistake. To roll out this plan that would sunset all this federal legislation, including Medicare, including Social Security, every five years unless it was authorized by Congress. And so, that was really was at the heart of the matter."
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