In October 2020, NBC News’ Kristen Welker moderated a presidential debate and asked the candidates whether they’d support raising the minimum wage. President Joe Biden didn’t hesitate, endorsing a significant increase over the status quo. The Republican incumbent was far more circumspect.

Donald Trump initially responded by saying that raising the minimum wage “should be a state option” — a curious stance, given that it’s always been a state option — before adding that he’d “consider” an increase “to an extent.”

What did that mean? No one was altogether sure, and when the then-president lost his re-election bid a few weeks later, it became a moot point.

Four years later, however, the Republican is returning to the White House and facing the issue anew. In fact, Welker reminded Trump of their debate exchange during his latest “Meet the Press” appearance, noted that the federal minimum wage has been $7.25 for more than 15 years and asked once again whether he’s prepared to raise it.

“It’s a very low number,” the incoming president conceded, referring to the status quo. “I will agree, it’s a very low number.” After some back and forth on the issue — he claimed restaurants in California are “going out of business all over the place” as a result of a wage hike — the host asked, “Is this something you’re going to look at?” Trump replied:

I would consider it. I’d want to speak to the governors. And the other thing that is very complicated about minimum wage is, places are so different. Mississippi and Alabama and great places are very different than New York or California, I mean in terms of the cost of living and other things. So it would be nice to have just a minimum wage for the whole country, but it wouldn’t work because you have places where it’s very inexpensive to live, where a minimum wage which is at $8 or $9 might be, you know, might have very little effect because the cost of living in certain places is really low.

For the most part, this is a familiar line from GOP officials who are opposed to minimum wage increases, but what stood out for me was a point the president-elect made in passing: “[I]t would be nice to have just a minimum wage for the whole country, but it wouldn’t work.”

That’s not an argument against raising the minimum wage; that’s an argument against having a minimum wage.

In other words, Trump, based on his on-air comments, believes that the federal minimum wage law, created by FDR and congressional Democrats nearly nine decades ago, shouldn’t exist at all.

That might’ve generated more public interest were it not for the fact that Trump’s position on the minimum wage has been so erratic for so long that there’s no reason to believe his views won’t change again soon.

Let’s not forget, for example, that during the GOP presidential primaries in 2016, candidate Trump opposed a wage increase, complaining that American wages were already too high. After winning his party’s nomination, he changed his mind, denounced the status quo and boasted that his willingness to entertain a wage increase showed he was “very different from most Republicans.”

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In one Fox News interview in July 2016, Trump declared, “I’m the one Republican that said in some cases we have to go more than minimum wage.” Pressed for specific number, he replied, “I would say $10,” up from $7.25.

The rhetoric, however, has always come with fine print: Trump wanted to be seen as taking the popular position, but he also made clear that he expected states to do the work.

As president, Trump continued to play rhetorical games along these lines. In fact, in July 2020, during a Fox Business Network interview, the president said, “I’m going to have a statement on minimum wage. I feel differently than a lot of people on minimum wage, some people in my own party. But I will have a statement over the next two weeks on minimum wage.”

That was 232 weeks ago. We’re still waiting for that “statement.”

Where does that leave us? I suppose it’s possible that the incoming president — the one who acknowledged the obvious fact that $7.25 an hour is “a very low number” — will take action on the issue he ignored during his first term. But given his apparent hostility toward the existence of a federal minimum wage, I’d recommend keeping expectations low.