Trump rips DeSantis for once supporting privatizing Social Security.

But Trump was also for privatization before he was against it.

Ron DeSantis hasn’t said he will run for president, but Donald Trump realizes that (1) DeSantis probably will run and (2) the Florida governor will be a formidable challenger. Accordingly, Trump has been attacking DeSantis for some time — calling him an ingrate, dubbing him DeSanctimonious (it didn’t stick), and so forth.

Now, Trump is going after DeSantis for his positions of a decade ago on Social Security and Medicare. Like other conservative congressional Republicans of that time, DeSantis supported “privatization” — introducing consumer choice into the retirement system so that recipients can take advantage of markets to maximize benefits. As a candidate for Congress in 2012, he said:

I would embrace proposals like Paul Ryan offered, and other people have offered, that are going to provide some market forces in there, more consumer choice, and make it so that it’s not just basically a system that’s just going to be bankrupt when you have new people coming into it.

I think people who are low income will probably be given coverage that is similar to what they have now. I think people like me, who’ve been more successful, it’s not even that I will have to pay more. I will have premium support that’s going to guarantee me a certain amount of coverage.

If you want something over and above that, if you want a Cadillac plan or something, then I do think it should be driven by the consumer rather than imposed on the taxpayers. And I just think that that makes sense.

It might make sense, but so-called privatization wasn’t popular at the time. If anything, it’s less popular now.

Hence Trump’s attempt to exploit DeSantis’ position from a decade ago.

However, there’s a problem for Trump. Earlier in the century when Trump first contemplated running for president, he proposed changes to the retirement system just like Paul Ryan’s. In fact, he went one big step further by arguing that the retirement age should be raised to 70.

As to “privatization,” Trump wrote:

Privatization would be good for all of us. As it stands today, 13.6 percent of women on Social Security live in poverty. Harvard University researchers studied almost two thousand American women who retired in 1981 and found that virtually every woman—single, divorced , married , or widowed— would probably be better off financially under a system of fully private investment accounts.

Not one woman would have been worse off. On average, personal accounts would have provided a single woman with 58 percent more than Social Security, and wives with 208 percent more.

Directing Social Security funds into personal accounts invested in real assets would swell national savings, pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into jobs and the economy. These investments would boost national investment, productivity, wages, and future economic growth.

These are fair points — the same ones Paul Ryan, Ron DeSantis, and many other conservatives made.

As to the retirement age, Trump wrote:

A firm limit at age seventy makes sense for people now under forty. We're living longer. We're working longer. New medicines are extending healthy human life. Besides, how many times will you really want to take that trailer to the Grand Canyon?

The way the workweek is going, it will probably be down to about twenty-five hours by then anyway. This is a sacrifice I think we all can make. And I don't accept the criticism that it's easy for guys like me to tell thirty-year-olds they shouldn't retire until they're seventy . Like a lot of people I know, I plan to work forever. My father was in his late eighties before he stopped coming to the office. If you're wondering when my retirement date will be, it will be about one day shy of the death date chiseled on my tombstone

Trump and his father should be commended for their rugged individualism. However, the current incarnation of Trump contemplates making America great again without anyone being particularly rugged and without anyone in America sacrificing anything.

As a candidate for president in 2016, Trump abandoned his positions on Social Security and Medicare reform. But apparently he didn’t become a complete “hands off” guy. According to the Washington Post, each of his White House budget proposals included cuts to Social Security and Medicare programs.

My point isn’t that Trump was wrong to propose these cuts or to have proposed privatization years ago. My point is that Trump is on thin ice in attacking DeSantis for his similar position years ago. Indeed, DeSantis should be able to make Trump look foolish for launching this attack.

But Trump has been able to bluff (or lie) his way out of similar reversals in the past. During the 2016 campaign, for example, he repeatedly claimed that he opposed invading Iraq when, in fact, he expressed mild support for the invasion at the time it occurred.

Will things be different this time? Trump, his chutzpah undiminished, is betting they won’t be. He might be right.