Do not be fooled by Elon Musk backing down from a plan to scrap the Social Security Administration’s phone service.
The impulse behind it remains—despite the momentary reverse.
Even as President Donald Trump repeatedly pledges ”social security will not be touched,” he and First Buddy Musk are sure to continue their ongoing effort to eviscerate the agency that administers it.
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And they are doing so with strategies similar to those Trump employed when he sought to steal the 2020 election by falsely claiming his opponent had stolen it.
Back in the aftermath of what Trump still insists was a rigged election, his minions pursued myths about dead voters and discarded ballots and “flipping” voting machines. They re-tallied votes and combed through voter rolls and accused election workers of being party to fraud. And they came up with nothing that would have materially affected the outcome.
After he actually won the 2024 election with the considerable help of Musk’s mega-millions, Trump gave the world’s richest man license to create a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to chainsaw government spending and dismantle the supposed deep state of right-wing imagining.
In a sworn affidavit first reported by The Washington Post, former senior Social Security Administration (SSA) official Tiffany Flick says DOGE operative Mike Russo appeared to arrive at the agency with the presumption there would be wanton waste and fraud. As the new SSA chief information officer, Russo then unsuccessfully sought to substantiate a myth, just as the Trump crew had after the 2020 election.
Flick, who was then the acting chief of staff to the acting commissioner, says in the affidavit that “as soon as Mr. Russo started, the commissioner’s office offered to assist him in the areas related to potential fraud to help him understand how the programs work, what measures the agency currently takes, and areas that need specific focus.”
Flick says Russo was offered briefings on the current measures “to help ensure the accuracy of benefit payments , including those measures that ensure we are not paying benefits to deceased individuals.”
“However, Mr. Russo seemed completely focused on questions from DOGE officials based on the general myth of supposed widespread Social Security fraud, rather than facts,” she adds in the affidavit, which was filed as part of a federal suit filed by Democracy Forward to black DOGE’s intrusions into SSA databases containing private nearly every American.
The DOGE boys, who did not respond to a request for comment, had been diving blindly into SSA data looking for fraud just as the election deniers had into the voting records. They came upon long lists of people more than a century old who had not been recorded as dead. The staff explained to Russo that the failure resulted from the agency using COBOL, a 60-year-old program. The DOGE folks were assured that none of these folks or their relatives were getting checks.
But that was just the truth, and if relayed to Musk, it did not stop him from posting on the social media platform he owns that, “Having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as ‘ALIVE’ when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem. Obviously. Some of these people would have been alive before America existed as a country. Think about that for a second …”
Musk indulged in his penchant for witty misinformation.
“Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security.”
Musk also posted a host of misleading numbers that Trump cited in his joint address the next day.
“Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old,” he said. “It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119…. 3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129. 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139. 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149.”
He added “And money is being paid to many of them, and we’re searching right now.”
He looked over to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“In fact, Pam, good luck. Good luck. You’re going to find it.”
He was pumping up a myth as big as the falsehoods used to support the big lie about the defeat he can still not accept.
“But a lot of money is paid out to people because it just keeps getting paid and paid, and nobody does — and it really hurts Social Security and hurts our country.”
He was not done.
“1.3 million people from ages 150 to 159. And over 130,000 people, according to the Social Security databases, are age over 160 years old. ‘
He looked over to Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“We have a healthier country than I thought, Bobby. Including, to finish, 1,039 people between the ages of 220 and 229; one person between the age of 240 and 249; and one person is listed at 360 years of age.”
At the start of this recitation, Trump had said his administration was “identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors and that our seniors and people that we love [and] rely on.”
In fact, a 2024 Inspector General’s report states that less than 1 percent of social security payments between 2015 and 2022 were fraudulent. The report noted that no private insurance company does better.
Trump’s talk of how we love and rely on “our seniors” is called into question when you consider that DOGE has begun gutting the SSA, closing 47 regional offices and targeting 7,000 of its 57,000 of its staffers, for lay-offs, including the people who actually had been effectively combating fraud. And Musk was calling social security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
During the lead up to the 2024 election, Musk had joined in voicing a MAGA conspiracy theory that the influx of migrants was a plot by the Democrats to generate more voters. He is now offering a corollary during his assault on social security, calling it “gigantic magnet to attract illegal immigrants and have them stay in the country.”
Never mind that only citizens and permanent residents can collect social security benefits. That means non-citizens who pay taxes are paying into Social Security without getting anything back.
A very different and more credible conspiracy theory is proposed by Alex Lawson, the executive director of Strengthen Social Security, a group dedicated to expanding and strengthening the benefits program. He believes that Trump and Musk are seeking to overcome social security’s remarkable popularity by scuttling the SSA to the point people can no longer rely on their benefits and turn against it.
“They are lying about Social Security, and it’s enormous, big lies, right? Like, the more brazen and disprovable, the better.,” Lawson told the Daily Beast. “The point is to push this big lie, and then under the chaos of that big lie, you have Elon Musk and the DOGE boys just taking a chainsaw right through the heart of the agency.”
Lawson believes that the real goal is not to save taxpuer’s money, but to grab the $2.7trillion in the SSA kitty.
“They are clearly working to destroy Social Security so that they can hand it over in one way or the other to Wall Street, right?” he said.. “They are going to cut benefits and give giant tax handouts to billionaires and Elon Musk, they’re going to privatize it in whatever way they can.”
His view is shared by Martin O’Malley, former Democratic governor of Maryland and until recently SSA commissioner. He believes that Trump and Musk are seeking to “pull a fast one” with social security.
“They’re gutting it,” he said at a town hall this week. “They’re breaking it from the inside to make it incapable of serving the American people who paid for it and who paid for the customer service. I do believe they want to break it so they can liquidate it.”
O’Malley and Lawson and like-minded others note that Frank Bisignano, Trump’s pick for new SSA commissioner is president and CEO of Fiserv and previously COO of JPMorgan Chase.
In the House of Representatives, the new Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE), is chaired by Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), She was heading into the first meeting in December when Lawson approached an handed her a Trump campaign mailer detailing promises he made during 2025 election.
One, headed “PROTECT SENIORS,” reads:
“Our Commitment: President Trump has made absolutely clear that he will not cut one penny from Medicare or Social Security. American Citizens work hard their whole lives, contributing to Social Security and Medicare. These programs are promises to our Seniors, ensuring they can live their golden years with dignity. Republicans will protect these vital programs and ensure Economic Stability. We will work with our Great Seniors, in order to allow them to be active and healthy. We commit to safeguarding the future for our Seniors and all American families.”
Greene threw it on the floor. The promise remained.
On Thursday, The Washington Post reported that Trump and Musk were planning to shut down the SSA phone help line, saying people could just use the internet or go to whatever centers have not been closed. That was half a step too far and they got a measure of how protective much of the public still feel about social security. They backed off.
For now.
