Summary

Elon Musk suggested cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in a Fox News interview, citing debunked claims about fraud and linking benefits to illegal immigration.

He falsely claimed millions of deceased individuals remain in the Social Security system, a statement previously refuted by officials.

While Trump has promised not to cut entitlement programs, Musk’s remarks indicate they are under threat, potentially impacting millions of Americans.

His rhetoric echoes far-right conspiracy theories, raising concerns about his influence on policy discussions regarding social safety nets.

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    If you’re 70, don’t worry this will all be over soon…unless you’re doing an 18 year old right now. I would find me a nice person who might be coughing some freedom up. You’ll find then at the public transit and the urgent care unit at your local hospital. There are quicker ways. Thanks for voting trump!

  • adm@lemm.ee
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    6 hours ago

    Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll just move your money into something else like the crypto reserve

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    “Admits”.

    Haven’t demons like Paul Ryan had their entire political career motivated by ending Social Security? It’s not like the Republicans’ desire to kill old people is any secret…

    • TimeTraveler@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      You work until you die

      Either the work kills you (no OSHA) or You work until you die from old age

      There will be no retirement for the poors

  • Wren@lemmy.worldM
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    14 hours ago

    Seriously…. Why the fuck is this clown allowed to cut ANYTHING?

    The moment he cuts a single service someone depends on, he should be sued into submission. How is this happening?

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      6 hours ago

      Because the President and the Republican majority in the House and Senate are onboard with it, and that’s the authority driving it (mostly the President, but the reason that Congress isn’t objecting to or trying to block stuff is because they’re okay with it). Musk may be the face of the cuts — he doesn’t have to worry about re-election, unlike politicians — he has no authority of his own. His organization is just saying “this is what we should cut”, and the cuts happen under the President’s authority. Musk isn’t independently going out and cutting things.

      • GeeDubHayduke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 hours ago

        Musk isn’t independently going out and cutting things.

        It’s weird seeing this complete and utter bullshit being unironically spewed still. It wasn’t Trump that cut the air traffic controllers, or nuclear watchdogs, or infections disease investigators. It was Musk, and spreading this propaganda just helps protect Trump from allowing it.

  • SabinStargem@lemmings.world
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    17 hours ago

    We should use the chopping block on him, and repurpose his wealth to fund government programs. Especially for repaying federal employees for this shitshow.

  • Tarvoz@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    Where do I get a refund on my social security payments I’ve put in my entire adult life?

    • andrewta@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      I know you’re joking but for those that don’t understand:

      When you pay in your Social Security each paycheck. That money is immediately handed out to another person. When you go to collect Social Security in reality, you’re justliving on somebody else’s money. You never see your money again. It really is just social welfare.

    • 52fighters@lemmy.sdf.org
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      17 hours ago

      (not so) fun fact: The average black male American never sees a penny from social security because the program is biased toward those who live long enough to reap the benefits of the program. So, despite paying in an entire working life, dying too young rewards you with a big fat nothing.

      • GeeDubHayduke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 hours ago

        Also fun fact: I’ve been pulling made up statistics (also without any corroborating numbers) out of my butt since the last ice age!

      • theshoeshiner@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        The average life expectancy of a black male in the US is 72 years. Are you saying they’re just choosing not to pull SS? Something doesn’t seem right with your stat.

      • gamer@lemm.ee
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        13 hours ago

        What the fuck have you been smoking? Do you seriously believe that the average black male American will die before retirement age?

  • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    19 hours ago

    I sincerely hope these cuts do not happen, but if they do, I hope we see a massive “grey wave” of large scale protests from older folks who rely on these programs. They worked and paid into Social Security their whole lives and deserve that money.

    • Goodmorningsunshine@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      I already told my Trump-voting mom that if there’s anyone that deserves to lose it, it’s her. She doesn’t care. Trumpers are irrevocably anti-human even if they get hurt in the process. Fuck the future, fuck everyone but them, and fuck them too as long as everyone else is getting fucked harder.

    • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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      18 hours ago

      The thing is, the elders have all bought in to this idea that there’s no money for social security and medicare not because it’s been whittled away and underfunded and means tested to death for forty years, but rather there’s just massive, massive fraud, and everybody’s stealing from social security before it gets to them. So, they’re probably all cheering this push to cut entitlements because they think that all these fraudsters will be kicked off, and surely they won’t be kicked off, surely their social security benefits will actually be a good amount once all those mooches are kicked off. When it does happen to them, and it will, they won’t realize that it was by design, they’ll all be stunned that Trump and Musk made this “mistake” and swept them up in the cuts.

      • jaybone@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        And if we have elections again, they’ll thumb a ride from outside of their tent by the highway to catch a ride to the polling booths where they will vote for Trump’s third term? I’m thinking some of them will have to figure it out by then.

        • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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          16 hours ago

          Imma be straight with you, dawg, my MAGA mom is still unironically, dead seriously convinced that Obama is the anti-Christ and he’s going to come back and seize control of the government and launch a nuclear apocalypse literally any moment now.

          • tal@lemmy.today
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            6 hours ago

            https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2011/11/white-house-shooter-and-obama-the-antichrist-were-other-presidents-called-the-antichrist.html

            How Many Presidents Have Been Accused of Being the Antichrist?

            Hint: It’s not just Obama.

            Suspected White House shooter Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez was obsessed with President Barack Obama, according to investigators, and reportedly thought Obama was the Antichrist. In September, heckler David Serrano called Obama “the Antichrist” at a fundraiser. Have other U.S. presidents been suspected of being the Antichrist?

            Yes. Perhaps the first U.S. president suspected of being the Antichrist was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s extraordinary influence and desire to form a worldwide United Nations raised the suspicions of many conservative Christians. When President Roosevelt began to engage in diplomacy with the Soviet Union, prominent evangelist and politician Gerald Burton Winrod suggested that Roosevelt was at the very least under the influence of the Antichrist, and carrying out his plans. During John F. Kennedy’s candidacy for president, Protestant leaders compared electing Kennedy, a Catholic, to electing the Antichrist. In 1990 a man named Gregory Stuart Gordon invaded the house of former president Ronald Reagan, telling Secret Service agents “Ronald Reagan is the Antichrist. He must be killed and I must kill him.” While Gordon’s attorney claimed that Gordon was only trying to attract attention in hopes of gaining treatment for a drug problem, courts judged that his threat was serious and sentenced him to a two-year prison term.

  • futatorius@lemm.ee
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    18 hours ago

    While Trump has promised not to cut entitlement programs

    And we all know how much Trump’s word is worth.

  • Jimius@lemmy.ml
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    22 hours ago

    Reminder: you paid taxes in order to receive social security when you need it. If they negate on that deal, ask for your taxes back.

    • dx1@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      Social Security’s “trust fund” is an empty pit of debt obligations. Benefits to current recipients are paid with incoming payroll taxes. Any difference is made up with additional taxes or monetary inflation, by way of Treasury bonds. They “reinvest it in the economy” if there’s ever a surplus, e.g., through military contractors. It finances the national debt.

      Putting aside the quirks of that setup, the basic function is that the taxes you pay in now are not an investment in your own future, you’re basically just paying for the retirement of older people now. The expectation is that someone down the road will then pay taxes to finance your retirement. Hence, how SS was able to start paying benefits almost immediately (3 years) after payroll taxes started being collected.

        • IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          Just tack on a huge refund the next time you file your income taxes. With the cuts to the IRS they’ll likely never contest it…

    • Carmakazi@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      If it gets out of hand Elmo will be left holding the bag and likely forced out. The Trump admin will continue on like nothing happened, they won’t lose an ounce of support, and DOGE will just be a short footnote on our decline to fascism.

        • 9point6@lemmy.world
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          22 hours ago

          That’s not optimism, it’s the very real conclusion that Elon is the (miraculously unwitting) fall guy for all the bad shit they need done early on to facilitate everything else. They’ll get to do the whole “we got rid of the bad eggs, we’ve tuned over a new leaf” thing that conservative politicians love to do when they kick out a fall guy.

          This time next year he’s going to be shouting on some fuckhead podcast about how he was used. I practically guarantee it.

          Well that or Elon successfully manages to do what he thinks will happen and manages to take full control

          • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            22 hours ago

            Counterpoint: There’s a significant chance that Musk has dirt on Trump. He literally has access to Trump’s old DM’s from Twitter. There’s a good chance that when he was forced to buy Twitter he needed to find something he could leverage out of the forced buy. Trump’s DMs are easy pickings at that point, they were never encrypted. That’s why they’re called “Direct Messages” and not “Private Messages.”

            Further, there’s rampant speculation that Musk helped him steal the election, but that’s a lot more loose and may not be a real thing. Musk having access to Trump’s past DMs on Twitter is basically a fact.

            • Generic_Idiot@lemm.ee
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              19 hours ago

              Yeah but even if he had DM that said he raped and ate women and children none of his supporters would care

              Having dirt on him does nothing when his supporters eat dirt.

            • jaybone@lemmy.world
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              17 hours ago

              It’s just like I have said about Putin having the underaged piss tapes. I don ‘t get it. Why should Trump lick his boots? Trump never suffers any consequences. No legal repercussions. His cult followers don’t drop him. Those supposed piss tapes could come out and no one would give a shit. So I’m not sure what his Twitter DMs could possibly have either.

            • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
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              18 hours ago

              It’s neigh impossible to fix US elections without thpusands working in secret. Musk did not fix the election. More people voted for Trump because the right has made a concerted effort to make Americans dumber and it worked.

              In addition to Trump’s DM’s Musk might have his own ties to the Kremlin which will share dirt on both men with each other so none threaten Putin.

        • Carmakazi@lemmy.world
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          22 hours ago

          In the grand scheme of things Leon is just one of many douchebags. One that has been publicly grating to deal with for the rest of the gang. They’ve probably been planning an ouster against him for a minute, it’s just a matter of squeezing what use they can out of him in the meantime.

      • NeonNight@lemm.ee
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        21 hours ago

        I 100% expect him to throw Elmo under the bus like he has with every other person that’s been on his side. He won’t really even need to try, his supporters will do it for him because they can’t handle a reality where they were wrong about the Orange One

    • ieatpillowtags@lemm.ee
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      22 hours ago

      They’ll just cut it for anybody under 60 or whatever, and their base will cheer them on.

      • littletoolshed@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        Dude, we are talking about 12.4% of folks taxable earnings since the day they all joined the workforce. You think tears are the only things gonna happen if that got stolen?

        • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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          21 hours ago

          At the same time we’re also talking about a demographic that’s deeply steeped in fox news disinformation so who the fuck knows what they’d think the cause or actuality of the suspension of benefits would be.

          • littletoolshed@lemmy.world
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            21 hours ago

            I’m not certain which demo you’re referring. All Americans with jobs pay into SS, and certainly not even half of them give a fuck all about some shitty cable infotainment network.

            • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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              20 hours ago

              All Americans should care - but the folks that really care are the ones dependent on it in their retirement.

              • littletoolshed@lemmy.world
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                20 hours ago

                Agreed, totally, I just don’t think there is any evidence that all of those people (many, many Americans) are Fox News fans or would even want to be in the same room when it’s on the television.

                • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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                  20 hours ago

                  I was specifically talking to that demographic that collects social security which are of retirement age (generally) and overwhelming consume fox news according to viewership demographics.

          • littletoolshed@lemmy.world
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            19 hours ago

            Also (sorry to double comment you) wanted to mention, I don’t think any American has yet had to deal with actually not having SS benefits (I mean generally, in that they still exist, I am not talking about exceptional cases and those where the benefits were taken away legally, if that exists).

            From the Gallup article you posted:

            Social Security’s future has been a topic of debate for decades. The system is expected to be able to continue to pay full benefits to recipients through 2033 if no changes are made to the system. In 2034, the system is projected to be able to pay 80% of benefits to recipients.

            So it could happen in the next decade, but we expect it based on how it’s structured.

            If it gets taken away from Americans by some ruling class, I’m pretty sure the reactions will be swift and meaningful. And I’m not even referring to any kind of violence, just normal old social and political and legal actions.

        • nesc@lemmy.cafe
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          21 hours ago

          Yes. What do you think will happen? Do you think there were no dictators or tyrannical regimes before or that they were universally liked? Most of the people that were at the helm end up fine, after decade or more of being in power. Don’t delude yourself that there will be some kind of revolution, people will just take it and move on.

  • futatorius@lemm.ee
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    18 hours ago

    If he wants a wave of suicide bombers on mobility scooters, he’s on the right track.

      • Frozengyro@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        Yup, they’ll cheer him on as they go into bankruptcy, end up living on the streets, and begging for enough change to get a meal.

    • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      “Biden should have warned us harder! Harris tricked us! Fuckin leftists(lol) used reverse psychology! Imma MAGA even harder just to get revenge!”

  • My_IFAKs___gone@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    No way, a horrible person admits they probably might do something horrible after establishing a strong track record of doing horrible things?! I am SHOCKED. Who could have seen this horrible administration known for doing horrible things doing something horrible like this?