Elon Musk, the de facto head of the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency, was berated anew Friday after insidiously tarring millions of Social Security recipients as "fraudsters"—a tactic critics called part of an orchestrated Republican scheme to destroy the vital earned benefits program.
Musk and seven DOGE staffers—all of them men—appeared on Fox News Thursday, where the world's richest person called the Trump administration's crusade to eviscerate the federal government under pretext of improving efficiency "the biggest revolution in the government since the original revolution" in 1776.
The DOGE staffers repeated unfounded claims that Social Security is riddled with fraud; that in some cases, 40% of calls to the Social Security Administration phone center are fraudulent; and that millions of people aged 120 and older are registered with SSA.
Acknowledging that DOGE's wrecking-ball approach to government reform is getting "a lot of complaints along the way," Musk said: "You know who complains the loudest, and with the most amount of fake righteous indignation? The fraudsters."
Musk's comments echoed those of billionaire U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who suggested on a podcast last week that only a "fraudster" would complain about a missed Social Security check.
Responding to what she called Musk's "absurd claim," Nancy Altman, president of the advocacy group Social Security Works (SSW), said Friday that "the truth is that Social Security has a fraud rate of 0.00625%, far lower than private sector retirement programs."
"It is Musk and DOGE who are inviting in fraudsters," she continued. "Scammers are already rushing in to take advantage of the confusion created by DOGE's service cuts."
Critics have denounced the Trump administration for sowing chaos at SSA and other federal agencies by planning to lay off thousands of workers, slash spending, and implement other disruptive policies. Cuts in SSA phone services were reportedly carried out in response to a direct request from the White House, which claimed it is simply working to eliminate "waste, fraud, and abuse."
"The truth is that Social Security has a fraud rate of 0.00625%, far lower than private sector retirement programs."
This "DOGE-manufactured chaos," as Altman calls it, has already led to the SSA website crashing several times in recent weeks and hold times of as long as 4-5 hours for those calling the agency.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) on Thursday noted that while it would be clearly illegal for President Donald Trump and DOGE to cut Social Security benefits without congressional authorization, there are other ways for the administration to hamstring the agency.
Referencing a new in-person verification rule that was delayed and partly rolled back this week, Warren said:
Say a 66-year-old man qualifies for Social Security. Say he calls the helpline to apply, but he's told about a new DOGE rule, so he has to go online or in person. He can't drive. He has trouble with the website, so he waits until his niece can get a day off to take him to the local office, but DOGE closed that office, so they have to drive two hours to get to the next closest office. When they get there, there are only two people staffing a 50-person line, so he doesn't even make it to the front of the line before the office closes and he has to come back. Let's assume it takes him three months to straighten this out, and he misses a total of $5,000 in benefits checks, which, by law, he will never get back.
"This scenario is a backdoor way Musk and Trump could cut Social Security," the senator added. "That's what I'm fighting to prevent."
Democratic lawmakers and others argue that the Trump administration's approach is "a prelude to privatizing Social Security and handing it over to private equity," as Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said earlier this week.
"Improving Social Security doesn't start with shuttering the offices that handle modernization, anti-fraud activities, and civil rights violations," the senator asserted. "It doesn't start with indiscriminately firing or buying out thousands of workers, and it doesn't start with restricting customer service over the phone and drawing up plans to close field and regional offices."
These and other moves, including the nomination of financial services executive Frank Bisignano as SSA commissioner, belie Trump's claim that he is "not touching" Social Security, upon which 70 million Americans—including nearly 9 in 10 people aged 65 or older—rely for their earned benefits.
So do Trump and Musk's own words. The president has called Social Security a "scam" and Musk recently referred to it as "the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time."
"No one who thinks Social Security is a criminal Ponzi scheme should be anywhere near our earned Social Security benefits or the sensitive data we provide the Social Security Administration," said SSW's Altman.