Trump Baselessly Claims Millions of People Born in the 1800s Are Getting Social Security Checks
President Donald Trump baselessly claimed that people born during the Civil War – and even before – have been receiving Social Security checks.
On Sunday, White House adviser Elon Musk claimed his “Department of Government Efficiency” found that more than 20 million Americans over the age of 100 have been receiving checks from the Social Security Administration. He alleged the figure included people who were born in 1875. The billionaire shared a screenshot of a spreadsheet he said was from the SSA’s database.
Speaking at a conference of investors in Miami on Wednesday, the president reiterated Musk’s baseless claims about Social Security and appeared to add some embellishments of his own.
“But listen to this – 3.6 million people are on Social Security rolls from the age of 110 years old to 119,” he said. “Do you think there are really that many? Those people are seriously old. But it gets worse – 3.4 7 million people are on Social Security from the age of 120 years old to 129 years old, 3.9 million people are on Social Security from 130 years old to 139 years old.”
Trump later added that there are “3.5 million people from the age 140 to 149 years old” on Social Security, and that “1.3 million people are on Social Security from age 150-159. And over 130,000 people are on Social Security over the age of 160 years old, ok? Including 1,039 people. Think of it. Over 1000 people, between the ages of 220-229. And one person of 240 years old and 249. And the record topper, there is one person on Social Security who is 360 years old, which is approximately 110 years older than our country.”
The assembled crowd cheered Trump’s performance.
As several publications have pointed out, some of these claims appear to originate from a quirk in the SSA’s databases, which use an old programming language known as COBOL. As The Washington Post explained:
The challenge with COBOL is that it doesn’t have a standardized way to store and work with dates — unlike most modern programming languages. Instead, many dates in COBOL must be coded to a reference number, often using an international standard, Rege explained.
The most common reference date number is May 20, 1875, under an international standard known as ISO 8601. That means if someone applies for Social Security without a birth date, they may be recorded as 150 years old in the database depending on how a programmer troubleshoots the issue.
Programmers can overcome these limitations in COBOL’s functionality, but they may also opt to use 1875 as a placeholder for unknown dates if it aligns with the database’s purpose… For example, when the federal government began issuing regular monthly Social Security payments in January 1940, recipients needed to be at least 65 to qualify, meaning they needed to be born in 1875 or before.
Those who crafted the Social Security database may have, therefore, set 1875 as the default birth year for anyone who lacked that information at the time.
The Social Security Administration was thrown into turmoil this week when its Trump-appointed acting commissioner resigned after Musk and DOGE demanded access to “sensitive files” at the agency. Trump was asked about the resignation a day later and he seemed to be unable to recall if she resigned or he fired her.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, I– resigned or got fired. I think I fired. You know, when you fire somebody, they always resign and then they say, ‘We resigned.'”
Watch above via C-SPAN.
