“They are laying the groundwork for denying benefits to anyone they want to punish or deem unworthy—or indeed, any one of us,” said the president of Social Security Works.
U.S. President Donald Trump launched his latest threat against Social Security on Tuesday under the guise of combating fraud, floating the possibility of stripping benefits from “millions of people” as Elon Musk’s lieutenants infiltrate the agency that administers the nation’s most effective anti-poverty program.
“The good thing about Social Security and what I read is if you take all of those numbers off because they’re obviously fraudulent or incompetent… all of a sudden we have a very powerful Social Security with people 80 and 70 and 90 but not 200 [years old].”
“We have millions and millions of people over 100 years old” who are receiving Social Security payments, Trump continued.
The Republican president did not provide any evidence for his claim of substantial fraud in the Social Security program, which provides benefits to roughly 70 million Americans. Musk has similarly claimed, without evidence, that “tens of millions of people [are] marked in Social Security as ‘ALIVE’ when they are definitely dead.”
Watch Trump’s comments:
Trump: We have millions and millions of people over 100 years old. Everybody knows that’s not so. We have a very corrupt country, a very corrupt country. The good thing about Social Security and what I read is if you take all of those numbers off because they’re obviously… pic.twitter.com/OwwxJ6difQ
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 18, 2025
A 2024 report from SSA’s inspector general found that just 0.84% of the $8.6 trillion in Social Security benefits paid out between 2015 and 2022 were dispensed improperly. Trump recently fired the SSA inspector general, along with more than a dozen other agency watchdogs.
Nancy Altman, president of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, told Common Dreams on Wednesday that Trump’s remarks about purported Social Security fraud were “outrageous lies.”
“Social Security has vanishingly small amounts of fraud, which are generally quickly uncovered when the agency is adequately funded,” said Altman. “Trump and Musk are intentionally undermining confidence in our Social Security system. They are laying the groundwork for denying benefits to anyone they want to punish or deem unworthy—or indeed, any one of us.”
On Tuesday, Fox News aired a joint interview with Trump and Musk in which the president pledged that “Social Security won’t be touched… other than if there’s fraud or something.”
“We’re going to find it,” Trump added.
“Musk’s baseless claims of massive fraud are a poorly disguised pretext to cut benefits for seniors to pay for his giant tax cut.”
The Associated Press reported that “over the past few days, President Donald Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk have said on social media and in press briefings that people who are 100, 200, and even 300 years old are improperly getting benefits—a ‘HUGE problem,’ Musk wrote.”
But AP noted that “as of September 2015, the agency automatically stops payments to people who are older than 115 years old.”
The outlet added that “part of the confusion comes from Social Security’s software system based on the COBOL programming language, which has a lack of date type. This means that some entries with missing or incomplete birthdates will default to a reference point of more than 150 years ago.”
Trump’s latest attack on the Social Security system came after the SSA’s acting commissioner resigned this past weekend over a clash with Musk lieutenants who sought access to highly sensitive Social Security data.
Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, said in a statement Tuesday that “despite President Trump’s promise not to touch Social Security, Elon Musk has gained access to the system that cuts your grandmother’s Social Security check and is wreaking havoc.”
“Musk’s baseless claims of massive fraud,” Jacquez added, “are a poorly disguised pretext to cut benefits for seniors to pay for his giant tax cut.”
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