Why do Trump and Musk keep pushing the Social Security fraud narrative?

150-year-olds are not receiving Social Security payments

This week, he tweeted a spreadsheet showing how many people in the system are in each age bracket. More than 1.3 million people are marked as between the ages of 150 and 159, while almost 2,800 are listed as 200 and older. 

“If you take all of those millions of people off Social Security, all of a sudden we have a very powerful Social Security with people that are 80 and 70 and 90, but not 200 years old,” Trump said. 

But data on the Social Security Administration’s website shows that only about 89,000 people over the age of 99 are receiving payments on the basis of their earnings. And there are only an estimated 108,000 centenarians living in the U.S., according to United Nations data, while the oldest known human being lived to the age of 122. 

Wired magazine reported that the number of people in the 150-year age bracket may have to do with the programming language used by the SSA, known as COBOL, or the Common Business Oriented Language. The 65-year-old system can still be found at government agencies, businesses and financial institutions. 

Basically, when there is a missing or incomplete birthdate, COBOL defaults to a reference point. The most common is May 20, 1875, when countries around the world attended a convention on metric standards. Someone born in 1875 would be 150 in 2025, which is why entries with missing and incomplete birthdates will default to that age, Wired explained. 

What's the strategy here? Are they claiming fraud to justify program wide cuts to Social Security? Or will they claim they reduced Social Security fraud to highlight the effectiveness of DOGE?

Edit:

Thank you kindly for the discussion, I appreciate everyone's viewpoints and answers to my questions.

My personal beliefs are the status quo is taking us down the wrong path, we need to change to a more empathetic and environmentally conscious future. We need to do this nonviolently and inclusively, and the more we are active about sharing the facts the better off we will be. We need people to understand that billionaires are only there because the workers are sacrificing a majority of their labor value to keep a job and collect Social Security. If you take SS away, just like taking away pensions or losing a major investment into a stock market dive—there will be public outrage. We must rise above the violence and always remain civil whenever possible. The pardoning of the J6 folks was a slippery slope to the protection of democracy, essentially condoning their actions because their leader is now in power... that is a threat to democracy if I have ever seen one. That said, never be afraid to rise up from those who seek to tread on you...

I highly recommend the film Civil War from 2024. Not only is it a cinematographic masterpiece but also serves as a borderline absurdist take on the USA if say, a third Trump term was introduced....