— President Donald Trump, in a speech to Congress, March 4
This is an example of how, even after falsehoods are exposed, the spin machine keeps working.
By the time Trump delivered his speech to Congress falsely saying that millions of people above the age of 120 were getting Social Security payments, The Washington Post on Feb. 19 had already published a detailed article that documented how claims of such payments — originally circulated by billionaire Elon Musk, then head of the cost-cutting U.S. DOGE Service — were wrong. (We never rated them, but they’re worthy of Four Pinocchios.) ...
Now, look at the announcement that DOGE made on May 23 in a social media post:
“After 11 weeks, Social Security has finished this major cleanup initiative: ~12.3M individuals aged 120+ have now been marked as deceased.”
The post was carefully worded. It did not claim that 12 million people had received improper payments. Instead, it said that these people had been marked as deceased. ...
[L]ook at how supporters of Trump greeted the news. Many said — or suggested — that Trump’s original false claim was confirmed.
21 comments:
Who cares? We have far bigger issues than a strange age classification system.
We use one lie
To sell another
We think of them
Like sisters
And brothers
In crime
We do it
All the time
If the devil
Keeps score
Then we’re
Racking up
Points galore
Maybe he’ll send
Us someplace special
When we’re gone
We are your
slash and burn
unconcerned
government
Help ourselves
To the spoils
Heat the hate
To a boil
Kind of guys
The original speech did not claim millions of improbably old people were receiving benefits; it said "many of them." Yes, it was a carefully phrased allegation implying that there were millions, possibly deliberately intended to incite outrage at the incompetence of SSA, but labeling it otherwise is no better than perpetuating falsehoods by the other side. Rather than labeling the original claim as outright falsehood, label it as deliberately misleading.
Musk originated the falsehood about impossibly old people getting Social Security benefits. Then Trump spread the lie to millions of people in his speech. Both should apologize to the Social Security Administration, and to the American people.
We have an administration that lies constantly and one shouldn’t be surprised. Sadly, many don’t do their own research and take his every word as truthful. Has anybody verified that grocery prices have gone down? Is that why buy now and pay later apps are booming?
Fake News from the TACO administration!
So now we have 12+ million made-up, fake, phony, fraudulent dates of death scattered across the Numident/Death Master File, forever destroying the integrity of one of the crown jewels of government-managed database records. Rome wasn't built in a day but it's amazing how fast it could be destroyed.
"Both sides! Just as bad! Nuance!"
he yelled, drowned out by the arsonist's gleeful cackles.
Who cares?!?! How about American citizens (or their disabled children) who were caught up in this ‘systems problem’
"No better?" The President pushes outrageously false propaganda before a joint session of Congress viewed by tens of millions of people aimed ultimately at dismantling the retirement system and some blogger is "no better" because in your opinion the language characterizing this attempt to ruin the lives of tens of millions of people and disparage thousands of government workers is just a little too strong. If it's not clear, a person who uses personal time on an obscure blog to condemn lies is a great deal better than the man committing gross abuse of power on national television.
You’ve been reading far too much Politifact.
@ the original poster at 7:35. The “Many of them” line from the original speech wasn’t just misleading. It was outright false. When the President delivered that line, the SSA DOGE team and Acting Commissioner Dudek were quite well aware that not a single person with an apparent age of 120 or older was receiving benefits. Whoever wrote that line into the President’s speech either didn’t fact check it first, or someone knowingly approved the lie.
@948 Some dates may be made up but many are accurate. People who died prior to 1960 were less likely to be listed as deceased on numident records. But some of them had correct dates of death on the MBR system.
These people obviously can't do math, as we learned in the beginning on immigration.
If you want more accurate death dates, how about hiring some genealogists to figure those out? Or, is it really not that important?
Another example of staffing shortages in the federal government.
Some economists are beginning to question the accuracy of recent U.S. inflation data after the federal government said staffing shortages hampered its ability to conduct a massive monthly survey.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the office that publishes the inflation rate, told outside economists this week that a hiring freeze at the agency was forcing the survey to cut back on the number of businesses where it checks prices. In last month’s inflation report, which examined prices in April, government statisticians had to use a less precise method for guessing...
@11:04 - "attempt to ruin the lives of tens of millions of people" - as someone who works directly on the It systems in question, I was angered by the messaging as well, but I would like to understand your claim of 10s of millions of lives ruined?
@12:24 - the problem is with the vague wording. After it was clear that SSA benefits weren't at play, Elon backtracked and referred to it as a "bank shot" in basketball. The living SSNs were being used to defraud other govt programs. I believe they have found proof of that, but I agree, the wording makes it seem as if SSA benefits were being paid.
@1:40, I know I don't want my tax dollars going to that because as you said, it's not really that important for the records in question.
It's not a staffing shortage issue - it's a this wasn't part of the mission issue. If a person wasnt collecting SSA benefits, we didn't care if they were dead or alive. That mission has now changed, but as far as I have seen, no conversations have taken place on how to ensure we capture deaths in these non beneficiary situations in the future.
As for shocking levels of incompetence -- of late, under new leadership we have guidance that meetings will not be more than 15 minutes, and backgrounders (e.g. any information) that cannot be condensed to a single one-sided page then it is returned to analysts and that talking points must include everything from the executive's name and position to the basic context for a topic. Unanswered problem reporting mailboxes, unanswered audits, unaddressed PR questions, and unanswered calls from the public and Congressional oversight committees. Brilliant.
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