Former President Donald Trump continues to attack Nikki Haley’s position on Social Security as he tries to siphon support from her in New Hampshire ahead of the state’s Jan. 23 presidential primary.
"Americans were promised a secure retirement. Nikki Haley’s plan ends that," a narrator says in a new Trump campaign ad airing in the Granite State. "Haley’s plan cuts Social Security benefits for 82% of Americans."
The 30-second spot features older people and a clip of Haley, Trump’s former U.N. ambassador, responding to a question about how she would address entitlement programs. "We say the rules have changed," Haley says in the ad. "We change retirement age to reflect life expectancy. What we do know is 65 is way too low, and we need to increase that."
A still from Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign ad "Threat from Within." (Screenshot from YouTube)
We know from a previous fact-check that this excerpt of Haley’s quote is missing context; Haley specified that the rules should change for younger Americans, not current or imminent beneficiaries.
But would her plan, as this new Trump ad claims, cut Social Security benefits for 82% of Americans — or roughly 272 million people?
No. The Trump ad is an extreme exaggeration of how many Americans would be affected by Haley’s plans for Social Security. It would not affect retirees or people nearing retirement.
Trump’s campaign didn’t respond to PolitiFact about its statistic’s source. The ad cites a CNN article that doesn’t support the claim.
The 82% appears to reference a rough estimate of the total Americans eligible for Social Security benefits. (Some people are not included because they receive Social Security disability insurance or are ineligible for Social Security, such as infrequent workers, for example.)
Haley has never advocated cutting all Social Security benefits for everyone currently in that 82%. Trump’s ad gives the false impression that Haley’s plan would end or cut into older Americans’ Social Security retirement. Haley’s more limited plan wouldn’t apply to current beneficiaries or anyone nearing retirement.
Haley has repeatedly said she would support increasing the age for Americans in their 20s, which she explained in the same interview that Trump’s ad misleadingly clipped. "The way we deal with it, is we don't touch anyone's retirement or anyone who's been promised in," Haley said in the Aug. 24 Bloomberg News interview. "But we go to people like my kids in their 20s, when they're coming into the system, and we say the rules have changed."
How the retirement age affects Social Security benefitsThe retirement age for collecting full Social Security benefits is 67 for Americans born in 1960 and later and was between age 65 and 66 years and 10 months for people born before 1960.
Americans who choose to collect their benefits early (which they can do at 62) receive smaller monthly payments. This offsets the additional checks they’ll receive over their lifetimes. For example, people who collect Social Security benefits at age 64 instead of 67 receive 80% of their full monthly benefit. People who retire at 62 receive 70% of their full monthly benefit.
Raising the full retirement age means people who retire before the new cutoff would receive smaller benefits, and people who opt to wait for full benefits will have to retire later.
