Attention Must Be Paid

JMM

Let's not[e] that Musk went on Joe Rogan and repeated his claim that he believes the entirety of Social Security is itself a fraud and should be abolished. He's also lying about pervasive fraud within the system which clearly means he plans to stop millions of people checks.

And that will get everyone’s attention. May even get the GOP to respond.

Mike Johnson on Elon Musk: "We meet late into the night in his office and we've looked at that. What he's finding with his algorithms crawling through the data of Social Security system is enormous amounts of fraud, waste, and abuse." pic.twitter.com/a1aECLet6k

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 2, 2025

That’s not the cover he thinks it is. In part because of this:

Johnson was saying the exact same thing when Musk was showing that he didn't understand the structure and function of the Social Security database tables. https://t.co/wM3DzC3JdJ

— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) March 2, 2025

Aside from the fact AI is not magic, and the oldest acronym of computing still stands: Garbage In, Garbage Out. Also aside from the fact Elmo and his minions are probably violating multiple privacy laws that Trump can’t waive (nor could he pardon them out of the class action civil suits they are creating). Further, still, aside from the fact fraud must be proven in court (as it was against Trump), and waste and fraud need to be better established than by tweets and a “wall of receipts” that was so quickly (and easily) proven false it vanished within hours of the report.

So if any of those three can be proven, present them in the right venue and allow the evidence to be examined. But the correct response is not to shut off payments just because you have the (invalid) power to do so.

Then again, there’s nothing that’s going to protect Trump if Elmo fucks with the SS payments, something no one person has the power to interfere with. Elmo’s going to find out why it’s the “third rail.” Especially when the checks to people who rely on them, don’t receive them. I’m not sure how Trump will survive that storm, except in name only.

And Trump will drop Elmo like a hot potato when that shit hits the fan.