In a tiresome tirade delivered to a cable news audience on Wednesday, March 5, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) freaked out about President Donald Trump’s attempts to expose fraud issues with Social Security during his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on March 4. Booker’s rant came during an appearance on MSNBC’s “All In” with host Chris Hayes.
That freakout over Trump’s efforts to call out fraud within Social Security in the hope it might be rectified was precipitated by the host, Chris Hayes, who noted that Democrats had booed President Trump when he commented on the massive amount of fraud within the Social Security system, using some numbers and using humor to draw attention to them.
Hayes said, asking Sen. Booker about that, “You were in that room last night if I’m not mistaken. There was a very long section. We played a little bit, but I mean, that whole section on the fraud and Social Security went he did a long riff each age bracket reading out these numbers, you could hear the boos, which I think were coming from Democrats. What was your reaction in that moment to what was what you were hearing and what and what the goal was?”
Replying, Booker said that Trump’s attempts to call out Social Security was a “debunked” lie, which isn’t really true. He said, “Donald Trump had has stopped stunning me. He doesn’t surprise me anymore. But this was a lie that they’ve been perpetrating for months has been so clearly debunked time and time and time again.”
Continuing, Booker snapped that Social Security is “vital,” though he didn’t explain why that made it a bad thing to call out fraud, as theoretically it would be good to remove fraud from such an important program, particularly one that is slowly running out of cash, so that it can last much longer than it otherwise would.
He said, “That for him to bring it up in this speech, when most of the people in that room on both sides of the aisle knew that this was a blatant lie and he did it in a mocking tone. You’re not being hyperbolic in any way. This is a person who’s trying to carry out what we’ve seen in the past: people trying to privatize Social Security or end the program or point to it as the problem we have in government emblematic of the problem when, in reality, it is a vital program that Americans have been paying into their entire working life.”
Still not done, Booker claimed that Trump was lying about Social Security being a broken program, though he failed to explain how. He said, “And so here’s the two-pronged strategy. One is this de-legitimization is to make it a mockery, is to tell lies over and over and over. Again until people start to believe that this is a broken program.”
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Booker then freaked out about firings within the Social Security bureaucracy, snapping, “And then at the same time, they are firing people that are essential to make the program work effectively and efficiently. And how do we know this? Because one of the first people they fired was. The inspector general who ran that report that you just used. To expose the lies of the person that’s in charge of keeping that institution accountable to the people and free of waste, fraud and abuse.” Watch Booker here:
For reference, Trump, during his speech, said, “The Government Accountability Office, a federal government office, has estimated annual fraud of over $500 billion in our nation, and we are working very hard to stop it. We’re going to. We’re also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors, and that our seniors and people that we love rely on. Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. I don’t know any of them—I know some people that are rather elderly, but not quite that elderly. 3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129. 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139. 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. And money is being paid to many of them, and we’re searching right now.”
He continued, “In fact, Pam [Bondi], good luck, good luck. You’re going to find it. But a lot of money is paid out to people because it just keeps getting paid and paid, and nobody does. And it really hurts Social Security and hurts our country. 1.3 million people from ages 150 to 159. And over 130,000 people, according to the Social Security databases, are aged over 160 years old. We have a healthier country than I thought, Bobby [Kennedy Jr.]”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video