Tag: White House

Republicans on Musk’s Social Security comments: Stop talking now

NBC News: Trump allies press the White House to dial back Elon Musk’s media interviews over his Social Security jabs (2025-03-23):

After his election, Donald Trump told NBC News that “we’re not touching Social Security,” other than to make it more efficient. But Elon Musk, who now wields enormous power in his role cutting government spending, has recently made comments critical of the program that are coming into conflict with Trump’s promise and worrying members of the president’s own party.

Those concerns have prompted some Trump allies to question whether the billionaire should continue to do so many media interviews, four people familiar with the matter told NBC News.

A particularly problematic remark came during Musk’s conversation with media personality Joe Rogan in late February, in which he described Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” A couple of weeks later, the billionaire once again went after Social Security, this time in an interview with Fox Business host Larry Kudlow. Musk, when discussing entitlement spending he deemed wasteful or fraudulent, said the program was “the big one to eliminate.” […]

A Trump adviser acknowledged that they were aware of “outside concern” around Musk’s comments. Trump allies — including some on Wall Street, in corporate America and Congress — have conveyed to the White House and even the president directly that Musk either has to be taken off air or needs to be more scripted. […]

The Democratic firm Blueprint tested 20 different political messages about Musk, and the four that were most “concerning” to registered voters were all about Social Security. The top two were about Musk’s proposals to fire Social Security Administration employees and dismantle phone services. By contrast, voters said the messages least concerning to them were about his personal life, such as Musk fathering children with five different women. The survey was conducted last week and released Thursday. […]

But the former official said Trump may be more amenable to tweaks that can be sold as eliminating waste, fraud and abuse — a sentiment the president hinted at in falsely asserting to a joint session of Congress that millions of dead people are receiving Social Security checks. That assertion came after Musk promoted similar misinformation online. The billionaire White House adviser has also claimed hundreds of billions of dollars in Social Security payments are being funneled to undocumented immigrants — framing that could appeal to Trump.

Musk’s promise to cut $1 trillion to $2 trillion in federal spending is virtually impossible without touching entitlement spending. And while Trump insists he wants to root out fraud, that’s unlikely to dent the program’s spending. The Social Security inspector general found that improper payments from fiscal year 2015 to 2022 totaled less than 1% of benefits paid over that time — and most of those were overpayments. […]

This person noted that elderly Social Security recipients who might not be tech-savvy and live far from a Social Security office are going to be most affected by the changes.

“It’s going to prevent people from getting their benefits,” this person said, adding that the effort amounts to “a very stealthy, very covert hostile takeover.” […]

Altman said giving Musk’s “DOGE teenagers and 20-year-olds in control of the Social Security Administration” access to seniors’ personal data creates data safety concerns that leave the program vulnerable to hackers and scammers — “a con artist’s dream,” she said. She argued that new rules requiring in-person office visits to register could mean that seniors who are disabled or immobile don’t end up getting benefits. And she warned that the removal of Social Security Administration workers will lead to weaker customer service and longer wait times for benefits.