Donald Trump promised Americans their Social Security benefits would not be touched amid worries the agency could be the next to face cuts after millions of instances of fraud were uncovered.
The president told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview Tuesday night that no people eligible for these retirement, disability and survivor benefits will lose their monthly payments.
But he did vow to crack down on fraud and suggested that some of the inflated figures at the Social Security Administration (SSA) might be illegal immigrants in the database.
Trump, sitting alongside Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk, said he would strengthen these benefits.
‘Social Security won’t be touched, other than if there’s fraud or something,’ Trump insisted. ‘It’s going to be strengthened.’
‘Medicare, Medicaid — none of that stuff is going to be touched,’ he reiterated.
President Donald trump told Americans he would not touch their Social Security benefits
But he also issued a warning to those that might be intentionally abusing the system, noting in the joint Fox interview: ‘Now, if there are illegal migrants in the system, we’re going to get them out.’
During a press conference before the interview aired on Tuesday, Trump read out some of the figures his ‘first buddy’ Musk found when reviewing the SSA database.
SSA keeps a list of those American citizens who could be eligible for benefits. But millions of those listed as living U.S. citizens in the SSA systems are well over 100-years-old.
Musk said there must be some ‘vampires’ collecting checks.
While the revelations of their existence in the system doesn’t necessarily mean they were being sent checks or that there was intentional fraud, it does exhibit a massive oversight at the federal government where long-dead Americans are still considered potential and eligible beneficiaries.
It comes after he listed at a press conference on Tuesday the instances of Social Security fraud that ‘first buddy’ Elon Musk found in the agency’s database
Social Security fraud is a real thing, but it’s unlikely the levels of fraud Trump and Musk suggest this week are accurate.
In an audit of SSA published in November 2021 it was revealed that the agency paid $298 million to 24,000 Americans who were already dead. The audit credited most of these payments to technical errors or faults in policy.
Meanwhile, other SSA Inspector General audits over the past few years reviewed and analyzed by Business Insider reveal that a few thousands dead Americans have received payments from the federal government and other errors are a result of overpaying beneficiaries.
While this amounts to billions in losses, it still represents under one percent of total SSA benefit payouts.