“The Trump Administration will not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits,” the White House said in a press release Tuesday. “President Trump himself has said it (over and over and over again).”
The White House renewed the pledge a day after Musk raised entitlement spending during a rare television interview, repeating his claims about rampant fraud in such programs.
“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, like, the big one to eliminate,” Musk said on Fox Business Network.
Musk added that by cutting spending in those programs, the federal government could save more than $500 billion a year.
It’s not the first time Musk has weighed in on alleged fraud in Social Security.
During an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan earlier this month, Musk said Social Security was “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
The White House stressed that Musk was specifically talking about cutting fraud in those programs.
Experts say those levels of fraud don’t exist, and Democrats are warning that Trump and Musk are laying the groundwork to claim “fraud” as a justification for cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in Social Security benefits.
“The richest man on Earth repeated again a bevy of lies that entitlement programs tens of millions of people rely on are riddled with fraud and abuse. That’s a pretext to slashing them, but it’s false,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday.
“The outrage that the richest man in the world would tell millions of seniors who depend on those checks each month that it's fraud – that it's waste – is outrageous.”
