Trump’s False Narrative on a Social Security Problem that Didn’t Exist

The core issue lies in Social Security’s decades-old computer systems, specifically COBOL, which lacks a standard date format. This led to placeholders like 1875 being used for individuals missing birth dates, often senior citizens from before reliable federal records.

While this technical quirk was known, the claim of a widespread problem of payments to excessively old people is false. The Social Security Administration already terminates benefits at age 115, a policy in place since 2015. Furthermore, a 2023 Inspector General report found that most people whose records lacked birth dates were already deceased and purged. The IG recommended a simple data update: mark these records as deceased.

Despite the reality – that there was no crisis of ultra-elderly receiving checks – President Trump boasted on social media about fixing a “major cleanup initiative.” His post claimed: “~12.3M individuals aged 120+ have now been marked as deceased.”

Analysis shows this was not a confession of improper payments, but an announcement about marking records. This action appears to be the implementation of the IG’s suggested data cleanup for predominantly deceased individuals.

Instead of fixing a real problem, Trump has effectively taken credit for a data management task and framed it as resolving a crisis that never existed. He has completely misrepresented the issue. This false narrative was then eagerly adopted by his supporters, who spread the claim that he stopped payments to people over 300 years old, turning a non-existent problem into a “fixed” achievement within their political sphere.