Elon Musk’s recent suggestion that millions of deceased individuals continue to collect Social Security benefits sent former Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-MD) into a fit of laughter Tuesday.
The on-air moment came during an interview on CNN as O’Malley made light of Musk’s social media remarks where he criticized the Social Security Administration, which he implied is rife with fraud and a source of millions of dollars in government waste.
“You're laughing,” CNN’s Boris Sanchez told O’Malley as he broke out in laughter. “But that is a concern that a lot of Americans have, is it not? Is it a laughing matter?”
“Yeah,” O’Malley said. “He has no idea what he's talking about. There is not like a zombie apocalypse of people, you know, cadavers running around with social security checks coming out of their pockets.”
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The former Democratic governor added that while “there are outliers” within the 72.5 million inside the system, he said it was more common for benefits to be erroneously cut off.
“But no, Elon Musk – I mean, the co-presidents – keep throwing stuff out on Twitter that, and that they can never back up,” O'Malley said. “I mean, ask Elon Musk… show me the 200 million that are still receiving checks. He can't. These 19-year-old nitwits from DOGE that are violating the law and plucking people's, you know, personal identifying information. They don't know what they're looking at.”
O’Malley concluded that driving “another 10,000 people” from the agency already at an all-time low in staff levels is “the biggest threat to Social Security.”
Tuesday also brought the resignation of the agency’s acting commissioner after an apparent clash with Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.
"I'm sad for the agency and I'm sad for the American people," O'Malley said of the resignation.
Watch the clip below or at this link.
