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"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 Pressreported 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."
Reporters and news outlets, argued one critic, "should frame Musk's attack on the liberal and administrative state as an ideological project, not one concerned with some type of value-neutral 'efficiency' or 'cost-cutting.'"
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made a show Wednesday of providing "receipts" to bolster the Trump administration's claim that an Elon Musk-led advisory commission known as DOGE has already uncovered massive fraud at federal agencies.
"There's a lot of paper we can show you," Leavitt declared.
But a closer look at the evidence Leavitt presented to members of the press underscores the ridiculous sleight of hand the Trump White House is using as it attempts to justify Musk and his lieutenants' lawless rampage through departments responsible for overseeing the nation's public education system, dispersing Social Security benefits, and supporting lifesaving medical research, among other critical functions.
The documents Leavitt waved during Wednesday's briefing were screenshots of contracts purportedly "found" by the Musk-led DOGE, or Department of Government Efficiency, which has dispatched staffers—many of them with close ties to Musk—across more than a dozen federal agencies.
One of the items Leavitt highlighted was a $36,000 contract for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Another was a roughly $57,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture for climate change mitigation efforts in Sri Lanka.
Neither of those examples, nor any of the others Leavitt cited, constitute evidence of fraud—a point that one reporter pushed the press secretary to address during the briefing Wednesday.
“Are all those things you just mentioned fraud?" asked CBS News reporter Jennifer Jacobs. "Or are they just contrary to the president's policies?"
Leavitt's reply indicated to critics that the Trump administration is defining as "fraudulent" programs which it opposes, a narrative that depicts the administration's attacks on federal agencies and spending as commonsense efforts to rein in abuse—rather than a far-right demolition project spearheaded by an unelected billionaire with glaring conflicts of interest.
"I would argue that all of these things are fraudulent, they are wasteful, and they are an abuse of the American taxpayer's dollar," Leavitt insisted. "This is not what the government should be spending money on. It's contrary to the president's priorities and agenda."
Journalist Aaron Rupar wrote in response to Leavitt that "going against Trump's policies is not fraud." (The Government Accountability Office (GAO), which has estimated that the federal government could lose up to $521 billion to fraud per year, defines fraud as "the act of obtaining something of value through willful misrepresentation, which is determined through a court or other adjudicative system.")
Watch the press secretary's remarks:
JACOBS: Are all those things you just mentioned fraud? Or all they just contrary to the president's policies?
LEAVITT: I would argue that all of these things are fraudulent.
(They are not fraudulent.) pic.twitter.com/TMehAQOu3O
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 12, 2025
Journalist and media critic Adam Johnson welcomed the growing push for concrete evidence regarding the large-scale fraud DOGE purports to have revealed during the first 30 days of Trump's second White House term.
"Musk's definition of 'fraud' is 'spending priorities duly approved by Congress and previous presidents (including Trump 1.0!) that the richest person on Earth randomly decided he doesn't like,'" Johnson wrote on social media. "This is obviously not a very honest or useful criteria for 'fraud' and thus reporters should frame Musk's attack on the liberal and administrative state as an ideological project, not one concerned with some type of value-neutral 'efficiency' or 'cost-cutting.'"
Reutersnoted Wednesday that "of the 15 agencies Musk's team have targeted so far, nine were singled out for elimination or downsizing in Project 2025."
A former Republican staffer acknowledged to Reuters that DOGE's playbook thus far "has not been for the dollar savings, but more for the philosophical and ideological differences conservatives have with the work these agencies do."
"It's clearly a bad-faith effort rooted in ignorance and a knee-jerk desire to shrink the federal government, both for ideological reasons and the creation of space to preserve the tax cuts for the rich."
Since the formal inception of DOGE at the start of Trump's new term, critics have expressed deep skepticism over the advisory body's stated mission of identifying and rooting out fraudulent federal spending and regulations, particularly given its leader's ideological and financial commitments and motivations.
"It's clearly a bad-faith effort rooted in ignorance and a knee-jerk desire to shrink the federal government, both for ideological reasons and the creation of space to preserve the tax cuts for the rich and corporations that will be locked-in later this year," Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote last month.
In testimony before the House Oversight Committee earlier this week, Donald Sherman, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said that "if President Trump was serious about promoting government efficiency," he would have "prioritized strengthening... already-existing independent government watchdogs," such as inspectors general across federal departments.
Instead, Trump fired inspectors general en masse, a move that—according to Sherman—"substantially increases the risk that government waste and fraud will go undetected, and unremediated."
Even when its stated objectives are taken at face value, DOGE has not lived up to the lofty rhetoric of its leader and boosters inside and outside the Trump administration.
Speaking to reporters with Musk at his side earlier this week, Trump claimed without a shred of evidence that DOGE has already found "tens of billions of dollars" in improper government spending. The president added that "when you get down to it, it's going to be probably close to a trillion"—Musk's stated goal.
But The Washington Postnoted that Trump's figure doesn't "come anywhere close" to matching numbers DOGE has posted on its X account.
"We added up all the figures posted, taking most of them at face value, though virtually no documentation was presented," the Post observed. "The numbers add up to about $6 billion a year, though $4 billion comes from a proposed cap on National Institutes of Health research overhead payments to universities, medical centers, and other grant recipients. A judge has blocked that for now."
The Post's Aaron Blake wrote in a column Thursday that "Trump would indeed seem to believe that many things he simply doesn't like or agree with are fraudulent, which helps explain the White House's posture right now."
"But that doesn't mean they are fraudulent," he added. "And that's a problem when you're using that as your justification for dismantling large portions of the government."
"It's official: Eric Adams' shameless campaign to avoid legal accountability for corruption has succeeded," said one member of the New York State Assembly.
New York officials, lawmakers, and activists expressed fury on Tuesday after U.S. President Donald Trump's Justice Department instructed prosecutors to drop federal charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a move seen as an overtly corrupt deal aimed at giving the White House free rein to attack the city's immigrant communities.
In a letter sent on Monday, the Trump Justice Department instructed federal prosecutors to "dismiss the pending charges" against Adams, which include several counts of bribery, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations.
The letter, sent by Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, states that the Justice Department reached its decision to call for an end to the case against Adams "without assessing the strength of the evidence or legal theories on which the case is based."
Instead, the Justice Department claimed the pending prosecution of Adams "unduly restricted" his "ability to devote full attention and resources" to cooperating with the Trump administration's anti-immigrant agenda. Attorney Luppe B. Luppen called the letter "one of the most openly corrupt writings I've seen on DOJ letterhead," adding that "it's comically, transparently a political favor, and the quid pro quo is utterly explicit."
Jumaane Williams, New York City's public advocate, said in a statement Tuesday that the Justice Department's directive shows Adams "adopted a strategy of selling out marginalized New Yorkers and our city's values to avoid personal and legal accountability."
"The mayor has always had the presumption of innocence—something he has rarely extended to the New Yorkers he's detained on Rikers pre-trial, or wanted deported based on accusations," Williams continued. "He said he wanted his day in court, but instead sidestepped that system using the privilege and power that so few people have access to. This is obscene and obvious—the White House doesn't want to lose their deputy in New York City."
"Eric Adams sold out New Yorkers to buy his own freedom, but he'll never escape the label of worst mayor in NYC history."
The DOJ's directive came in the wake of reports that Adams ordered top New York City officials to refrain from criticizing Trump or interfering with his mass deportation efforts. According to the local independent news outlet The City, Adams instructed his commissioners "to not be critical of the president or federal government on social media" and to "stop complaining about President Trump and move on because he was elected."
"The mayor has said he won't publicly criticize the president and has refused to criticize Trump's statements or actions when pressed by reporters," The City reported. "Trump said in December he would 'look at' potentially pardoning Adams, whose federal corruption trial is set to begin in April. It's fueled speculation that the mayor is acting chiefly to obtain a pardon or dropped charges from the president, even as Trump threatened to withhold crucial funding from the city."
New York State Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani (D-36), who is running in the 2025 New York City mayoral race,
said in response to the Trump DOJ's directive that "it's official: Eric Adams' shameless campaign to avoid legal accountability for corruption has succeeded."
"In the midst of a right-wing billionaire assault on the working class of our city, he sold us out for another personal favor," said Mamdani. "Election Day can't come soon enough."
People hold up a sign as Mayor Eric Adams speaks during the New York Public Library on January 30, 2025 in New York City. (Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Politiconoted Monday that the DOJ's order "continues an emerging pattern of the administration of President Donald Trump dropping politically charged criminal cases he inherited when resuming the White House last month." The outlet added that it's an "open question" whether Dale Ho, the judge presiding over the Adams case, has any power to resist the Trump administration's push to drop the charges.
"While some legal experts said Ho's hands are tied," Politico observed, "others believe he could outright refuse."
New York State Sen. Jessica Ramos (D-13) wrote late Monday that "Eric Adams sold out New Yorkers to buy his own freedom, but he'll never escape the label of worst mayor in NYC history."
"Donald Trump may think this buys him access to terrorize our communities," Ramos added, "but New Yorkers always stand up for one another, no matter how many corrupt narcissists try to hurt our families."