Donald Trump bragged that the U.S. is spending so much money on his war in Iran it has no funds to pay for daycare or healthcare.
The 79-year-old president made the boast during a typically rambling speech while hosting an Easter lunch at the White House on Wednesday.
“The United States can’t take care of daycare. That has to be up to a state,” Trump said. “We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people, we’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You’ve got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it too.
“Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal [level]. We have to take care of one thing: military protection—we have to guard the country. But all these little things, all these little scams that have taken place, you have to let states take care of them.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren jumped on the comments, in which Trump bragged he would rather direct billions of dollars in federal funding elsewhere.
“Imagine if instead of funding forever wars in the Middle East, the United States delivered universal child care and health care for all Americans,” the Massachusetts Democrat wrote on X.
Trump’s comments come as Republicans weigh slashing federal health spending to afford the additional $200 billion the Pentagon is requesting to fund the president’s deeply unpopular Iran war.
Millions of people are already predicted to lose their health coverage thanks to drastic cuts to Medicaid outlined in Trump’s “Big Beautiful” spending bill.
“Now, Republicans in Washington want to rip health care away from even more people to fund Trump’s reckless war in the Middle East. It’s shameful,” Democratic Pennsylvania Rep. Brendan Boyle, the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, posted on X.
In a low-energy primetime address to the nation later on Wednesday, Trump delivered vague updates about the war in Iran, providing no additional details beyond those he has been spouting on social media almost daily since the conflict broke out on Feb. 28.
This includes once again suggesting the war would be over in a few weeks, while offering no plan or clear objectives for the conflict.
“We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong,” Trump said.
“In the meantime, discussions are ongoing. Regime change was not our goal. We never said regime change, but regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders’ deaths.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
