US President Donald Trump on Wednesday admitted that the government was no longer able to spend properly on vital social security services—such as daycare, Medicare, and Medicaid—due to the war in the Gulf, which has crossed one month.
Speaking at an Easter lunch at the White House, Trump suggested that the responsibility to fund such major welfare schemes should lie with states, as it was now "not possible" for the federal government to do so.
"We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You got to let a state take care of daycare and they should pay for it, too,” he said, suggesting the states raise taxes to fund such programmes.
"It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things," he added, later calling them "scams", and suggesting that the money be spent on the war and national security.
While daycare refers to child care services, Medicare offers healthcare services for senior citizens aged 65 and over, and Medicaid supports people with limited income or resources.
However, just hours later, he continued with the war rhetoric against Iran in a highly anticipated speech, saying that the US was going to "finish the job ... very fast", not offering a clear idea about exiting the war.
“Over the next two to three weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong,” he added.
Iran, on the other hand, continues to dismiss Trump's war rhetoric, arguing that any ground invasion would lead to inevitable bloodshed of US troops, and has also promised attacks on vital infrastructure in neighbouring Arab nations if its own power plants/oil facilities were hit.
"History knows us well. What is clear is this: it is YOU who have carried the killing of children and crimes against humanity from the Stone Age into the modern world," the Iranian Embassy in India wrote in an X post, in its latest response to Trump's comments on the war.
This comes despite growing pressure from home to find an exit to the war, as gas prices rise sharply, having a major impact on cost-of-living prices.
This has also led to Trump's approval ratings dwindling to an all-time low, standing at -20 per cent, which is eight percentage points below what it was at this time during his first term,and the lowest-ever in his second term in office.
The primary driver behind these low ratings has been the war in the Gulf, which has seen a whopping 59 per cent of Americans disapprove of not just high oil prices—which have led to higher gas prices—but also inflation, as per a ratings tracker from The Economist.