During an appearance last Thursday at the GOP congressional retreat in Philadelphia, President Trump gave a ringing endorsement of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and his budget plans, saying that the days of Ryan writing up his budgets and "nothing happening" were over.

"Speaker Paul Ryan very, very special and he is writing his heart out, right? And we're actually going to sign the stuff that you're writing. You're not wasting your time. He would write and he'd send it up and nothing would happen. But now it's gonna happen."

On a surface level, those comments from Trump aren't all that interesting. After all, he's just a Republican president endorsing the budget plan of a Republican Speaker of the House... right?

Wrong.

Trump didn't just endorse any old budget plan yesterday, he endorsed a budget plan written by PAUL RYAN - the guy who's called for voucherizing Medicare, privatizing Social Security and block-granting (aka massively cutting) Medicaid in EVERY SINGLE ONE of the budget plans he's come out with over the past 6 years.

Again - not totally surprising that a Republican president would endorse a budget plan like that. But remember, Trump just spent his entire presidential campaign talking about how he was the only guy who would protect the social safety net.

He even bragged about it on his campaign website, saying that he "wouldn't touch your entitlements".

So what happened?

Was Trump ever serious about protecting the social safety net or was all that talk about savings entitlements just another one of his scams?