The White House went into damage control mode Tuesday after Elon Musk seemed to suggest that Social Security and Medicare were the next targets of his proverbial DOGE chainsaw.
On Monday, Musk told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, “So, the waste and fraud in entitlement spending, which is all of the—which is most of the federal spending is entitlements. So, that’s the big one to eliminate.”
Musk’s implication suggesting cuts to federal spending on government entitlement programs—the largest of which are Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—went viral on social media.
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On Tuesday, however, Donald Trump’s White House issued a press release saying that there were no plans to cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid—while still defending Musk and targeting journalist Jake Sherman instead.
“The Trump Administration will not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits,” the statement said. “President Trump himself has said it (over and over and over again).”
“Elon Musk didn’t say that, either. Fake Sherman is lying again,” the statement added, highlighting an X post from Sherman that read: “This interview will play in countless Democratic TV ads over the next few years.”
An X post from Trump’s Rapid Response team meanwhile added: “Stop lying, Fake Sherman. He was clearly talking about the WASTE in the programs. Here’s the indisputable video.”
The White House release then linked to a number of “facts” to prove its point, including an inspector general’s report from August 2024 that said there had been $72 billion in improper Social Security payments between 2015 and 2022. This amounts to less than 1 percent of the total paid in that span.
On Fox, Musk suggested that he could save as much as $700 billion by siccing his DOGE team on entitlement programs.
He has often suggested that the Social Security system is rife with fraud, pointing to the presence of many individuals well over 100 years old who were marked as alive in the program’s system. The White House statement linked to a 2024 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office: “Over the past two decades, the federal government has made an estimated $2.7 trillion in ‘improper payments’— the majority of which come in the form of ‘payments to deceased individuals or those who no longer [are] eligible for government programs.’"
The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Leland Dudek, clarified earlier this year that this does not mean the people in question are being paid.
“The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record,” he said back in February. “These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits.”
Nevertheless, Musk said in an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast last month that Social Security is “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
While Trump has repeatedly said he will not cut Social Security or Medicare, critics worry that he could use eliminating waste and fraud as an excuse to do exactly that.
“I’m not going to touch Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,” Trump said Sunday on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures. “Now, we’re going to get fraud out of there. We’re going to get the fraud out, and everybody wants us to get the fraud out, and, therefore, you will make it better.”
