Headlining the long, droning, and absurdly false address spouted by Donald Trump before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night was a litany of fantasy aimed at the Social Security system. A perennial target for Republicans since its creation, the nation’s most popular and effective government program has drawn malign attention from Elon Musk, world’s richest right-winger and the president’s designated hit man.

It was Musk who provided and inspired Trump with his latest fraudulent indictment of fraud – in this instance, the already-debunked claim that millions of Americans are still receiving Social Security payments long after death. Following a recitation of silly (and, knowing Musk, not necessarily accurate) federal spending items supposedly revealed by the billionaire’s Department of Government Efficiency, Trump first professed his usual warm concern for those who depend on those monthly checks.

“We’re also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors, and that our seniors and people that we love rely on.

“Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. I don’t know any of them. I know some people who are rather elderly but not quite that elderly. 3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129. 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139. 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. And money is being paid to many of them, and we are searching right now….” He continued until, with a flourish, he cited “1,039 people between the ages of 220 and 229. One person between the age of 240 and 249 — and one person is listed at 360 years of age. More than 100 years — more than 100 years older than our country. But we’re going to find out where that money is going, and it’s not going to be pretty.”

The “discovery” of those moldering fraudsters appears to derive from a very basic and embarrassing error by Musk and his DOGEbags – namely their inability to correctly interpret the computer printouts of Social Security Administration records. AsWired magazine magazine and other outlets pointed out a few weeks ago, when Musk first promoted this enormous scandal, those anomalous entries actually represent “a weird quirk of the Social Security Administration’s benefits system, which was largely written in COBOL, a a 60 year-old programming language that undergirds SSA’s databases as well as systems from other U.S. government programs.”

Out of routine use for decades, COBOL is likely unfamiliar to Musk and his gang of adolescent engineers. It has a strange dating reference system that commonly uses a reference point of May 20, 1875 -- which can produce some strange and suspicious results for anyone who doesn’t understand the data they’re perusing.

But the “shock” talking points Trump so dramatically enumerated were disproved and debunked weeks ago. Yet he nevertheless featured them in his speech, plainly aiming to undermine confidence in the system that he has promised to protect on many occasions over the past ten years.

Trump didn’t disparage Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme,” the cliché slur that Musk and so many other far-right critics use when denouncing the program. But the president has allowed his billionaire wingman to begin dismantling it, by firing thousands of its staff, from the top down, which experts say will soon result in denials and delays of benefits.

Musk has seized on his bogus investigation of Social Security payments to declare that the system is insolvent, as Republicans invariably do when they are preparing to slash at its provisions. And it is true that unless Congress acts, payments going out will exceed revenue from Social Security taxes by 2035 – and by law, benefits then will have to be cut.

But what neither Musk nor Trump ever mention is the obvious and equitable solution to this looming crisis. They never mention that solution because Republicans so strongly prefer to resolve the problem on the backs of the elderly and disabled, so many of whom languished in poverty until Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched the program during the New Deal.

Few economists have studied Social Security with as much rigor or dedication as Stephanie Kelton, who recently published a powerful response to Musk in DCReport, the excellent publication edited by Trump biographer and critic David Cay Johnston. In its headline and text, Kelton explains why Musk himself, as a symbol of grotesque inequality, represents the real reason that Social Security is “running out of money.”

As national income has increasingly skewed to the top of the scale, less and less has been subject to the Social Security tax – which in 2024 exempted all income above $168,500! In other words, the astronomical levels of annual income enjoyed by Musk himself, Trump, and all their billionaire pals, go untaxed by the system. And they’d like to keep it that way forever.

But we have known for more than 20 years – according to one commission study after another – that the simplest and fairest way to eliminate the Social Security deficit for all time is to raise or eliminate the cap on taxable income. Conservatives would much rather reduce or eliminate benefits, even though their MAGA supporters would suffer terribly. The real fraud isn’t Social Security, but the promise by Trump and his Republican allies to protect those families.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. He is the author of several books, including The Raw Deal: How The Bush Republicans Plan To Destroy Social Security and the Legacy of the New Deal. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.