President Donald Trump is vowing, as he always has, to safeguard Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits for all Americans in light of the mainstream media's attacks on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) weeding out wasteful and fraudulent federal spending.
Chief among them, MSNBC analyst Jake Sherman dishonestly claimed that DOGE's de facto czar Elon Musk said entitlements are the "big one to eliminate," linking to a Bloomberg piece with a similarly deceptive headline.
Of course, Musk meant cracking down on fraud, and he specified that when laying out his plans to Larry Kudrow of Fox Business.
Musk specifically said, "The waste and fraud in entitlement spending, which is most of the federal spending is entitlements. So, that's, like, the big one to eliminate. That's the sort of half-trillion, maybe $600 - 700 billion, a year."
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that taxpayers lose as much as $521 billion annually to fraud, most of which is within entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Social Security. Over the past two decades, the federal government has wasted $2.7 trillion in "improper payments," GAO says, and a bulk of it came in the form of "payments to deceased individuals or those who no longer [are] eligible for government programs."
According to a fact-check sheet from the Trump White House, which cited government findings of waste and fraud in entitlement programs, an August 2024 report out of the Social Security Administration (SSA)'s Office of the Inspector General found that about $72 billion had been "improperly" paid between FY 2015 and 2022. Meanwhile, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) disclosed it made more than $140 billion in improper payments in 2024.
Democrats have frequently lied about Trump's stance on Social Security and Medicare, claiming that he wants to put both on the chopping block. Last week, Rep. Al Green (D-TX) was removed amid the president's speech before a joint session of Congress after he ranted about Medicaid, declaring Trump had "no mandate to cut Medicaid." He has since been censured by the House—and could be stripped of committee assignments—but remains defiant.
This despite the fact that Trump himself has repeatedly promised to protect these old-age entitlement programs.
March 9, 2025: In a sitdown interview over the weekend on Fox News personality Maria Bartiromo's "Sunday Morning Futures" show, Trump affirmed, "I'm not going to touch Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid." It's about rooting out fraud, Trump explained. As he noted, "Everybody wants us to get the fraud out."
February 26, 2025: Asked before a Cabinet meeting if he can guarantee Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security won't be harmed, Trump replied, "I have said it so many times. You shouldn't be asking me that question [...] We're not going to touch it." Again, he reiterated, "We are going to look for fraud."
February 18, 2025: While talking to Fox News host Sean Hannity in the Roosevelt Room, an adamant Trump, sitting alongside Musk, said, "Social Security won't be touched, other than if there's fraud or something. It's going to be strengthened. Medicare, Medicaid—none of that stuff is going to be touched."
February 7, 2025: During a news conference, Trump said, "Social Security will not be touched, it will only be strengthened." However, he is seeking to "weed out" people who shouldn't be collecting Social Security, such as illegal aliens. "We have illegal immigrants on Social Security and we're going to find out who they are and take them off [...] We're not going to stand for that."
And those are just direct quotes from this year alone on the issue.
On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump posted a video to his website, in which he stated that not "a single penny" should be cut from Social Security. "DO NOT CUT the benefits our seniors worked for and paid for their entire lives," Trump declared. "Save Social Security. Don't destroy it."
Elon Musk and DOGE are bringing much-needed accountability to our out-of-control bureaucracy as they take a chainsaw to rampant waste, fraud, and abuse.
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