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Donald Trump made some news Monday when the conversation in a seemingly innocuous CNBC interview turned to the national debt, and whether hed be willing to cut entitlements like Social Security and Medicare to reduce it.

There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting, and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements, said Trump, the GOPs presumptive nominee for the White House. Theres tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do.

Even loose talk of touching Medicare and Social Security can be politically toxic in America, especially for Republicans, who have a long record of seeking to privatize the beloved programs or reduce their benefits. Almost immediately and in response to attacks from President Joe Biden Trumps campaign put out the word that he simply meant hed cut down on waste and inefficiency.

A day later, Trump was on the defensive during an interview with Breitbart News . I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare, he said.

With most politicians, you could try to parse these statements, hoping to divine some insights about their true intentions and values. But Trump is not a normal politician. He rarely talks about policy and, in instances like these when he does, his statements are so hazy and full of malapropisms that they could mean almost anything.

Its great material for Saturday Night Live . But if youre a voter trying to figure out what matters to Trump or what decisions hed make in office, youre basically out of luck. And although an inability to speak cogently about important issues might seem like a political liability, for Trump it may actually be an asset, because it obscures his more unpopular positions.

Thats arguably what happened in 2016. And it could happen again. But 2024 is different in one crucial way. When Trump first ran for office, he was a celebrity real estate developer with zero experience as an elected official. This time around, hes a former president.

Instead of imagining how he might govern, you can look at what he actually did especially on three issues that matter a lot to most Americans.

Trumps History On Abortion And Obamacare

One of those issues is reproductive rights, which my colleague Alanna Vagianos has covered in depth.

The issue has proved politically toxic for Republicans ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, ending the federal guarantee of abortion rights. In 2022 and 2023, anger over that decision helped save the Democrats from big losses; in 2024, it could help Biden keep his job.

Trump has promised to find a position on reproductive rights that will make people happy, as he put it on NBCs Meet the Press. But in that same interview, he also said that could mean a federal ban of a number of weeks or months or however you want to define it. And according to The New York Times , he has privately told advisers that he thinks a 16-week ban makes sense. Such a ban would apply even in those states that have acted through legislation or constitutional amendment to keep abortion legal .