Martin O’Malley made his feelings on President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) abundantly clear Tuesday.
The former Social Security Administration commissioner criticized the triad of government downsizing during a Tuesday interview with CNN, describing Trump and Musk as the “biggest threat” to Social Security and brushing off DOGE as a home to a bunch of “19-year-old nitwits.”
The scorching roast began when CNN anchor Boris Sanchez asked O’Malley, who ran the agency during the Biden administration’s last year, if there was any truth to Musk’s claims that Social Security checks were being distributed to dead people.
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“He has no idea what he’s talking about there,” O’Malley quickly retorted. “There is not like a zombie apocalypse of people, you know, cadavers running around with Social Security checks coming out of their pockets.”
The former governor of Maryland proceeded to clarify that the more common form of exploitation that takes place at the agency is when “really desperate people” hide the fact that a relative has died to keep earning from their Social Security fund. He added that the agency has checks in place to “interrupt payments” for people above a certain age, particularly if they’ve stopped receiving other benefits like Medicare.
“Elon Musk, I mean, the co-presidents keep throwing stuff out on Twitter that they can never back up,” O’Malley continued. “He can’t show me the 200 million that are receiving checks. He can’t.”
O’Malley then took aim at the “19-year-old nitwits from DOGE” whom he claimed were “violating the law and plucking people’s personal identifying information,” adding that Trump and Mask are the “biggest threat” to Social Security because they’re “going to drive out another 10,000 people from an agency that’s already buckling under a 50 year low in staffing, an all-time high in customers.”
When probed by Sanchez if he had any evidence that DOGE staffers were looking at Americans’ personal information, O’Malley said his claims were not speculative and reiterated that it is a “fireable offense” to go through people’s information in the way DOGE reportedly is seeking to do.
“It is a fireable offense if an employee goes through and browses to see what their brother-in-law might have made in the course of his life or those things. It’s a fireable offense and, oftentimes, it’s something that is referable to the inspector general for criminal prosecution,” O’Malley explained.
“But now we can’t do that because the co-presidents whacked all of the inspector generals whose job it is to police against waste, fraud, and abuse,” he continued, referring to Musk and Trump as co-presidents. “So there is abuse going on and it’s all being committed by the 19-year-old nitwits at those who are empowered by the co-presidents, Elon Musk and Donald Trump.”
O’Malley announced his resignation as SSA commissioner in November last year to make way for an apparent future at the Democratic National Convention. The former governor is reportedly seeking a nomination for chairman of the group.
Musk’s DOGE effort has barreled through a handful of federal agencies over the past few weeks, terminating a slew of employees and requesting access to highly-classified data systems including reported systems at the IRS. The Tesla exec’s staff at DOGE is also reportedly made up of a bunch of baby-faced tech aficionados which has sparked significant concern from the left on the department’s own efficiency.
