Joe Rogan, a longtime admirer of Elon Musk, recently pushed back against the billionaire's claims about Social Security fraud, calling them misleading. On a recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” he and guest Mike Baker discussed Musk's assertion that millions of dead Americans—some supposedly 150 years old—are receiving Social Security benefits.
Misinterpretation or Fraud?
Musk first made the claim during a meeting in the Oval Office earlier this month, stating he had found “crazy things” in the Social Security system, including people marked as alive despite being impossibly old. He later doubled down on social media, posting screenshots of data that he said showed widespread fraud.
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President Donald Trump repeated Musk's numbers a few days laterr during a Mar-a-Lago press conference, raising concerns about potential fraud in the system. “Now, the big thing is, how many of these people got paid?” Trump asked, suggesting that if the numbers were true, it would be “a massive fraud.”
However, Social Security experts quickly dismissed the claims. Kathleen Romig from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out to ABC News that the numbers were exaggerated, stating, “So, when they’re throwing around numbers like tens of millions of dead people are getting Social Security, well, they’re throwing around numbers like tens of millions of dead people are getting Social Security, well, there’s only 67 million total. What are they talking about? Half the people are actually dead? The numbers are so ridiculous. It’s not true.”
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Rogan’s Take
Rogan, who had Elon Musk five times on his podcast and once called him his “favorite billionaire,” took a skeptical stance on this claim, bringing up insights from experts who understand COBOL, the outdated programming language still used in government systems. He read from a post explaining that Social Security databases often misinterpret missing data. If a person's birth or death date is missing, the system defaults to the year 1875, making it appear as though someone is 150 years old.
“This isn’t a vampire conspiracy,” Rogan said, mocking the idea that hundreds of 300-year-old people are collecting Social Security checks. “The people that actually understand it are saying that’s not really the case.”
Baker added that Musk's claim was an overreaction to bad data rather than evidence of fraud. “It doesn’t even necessarily mean that all these people are receiving checks,” he said. “They’re just listed on the files, and it doesn’t mean money’s going out to them.”
“From a messaging perspective, does Elon need to screenshot that and then send it out as a tweet and then suddenly you’ve got a couple million people going, ‘Oh my God, we’re paying dead people,'” Baker asked.
The Real Problem: Outdated Systems, Not Fraud
Experts say Musk likely misinterpreted a database called Numident, ABC News reported, which contains records of every person assigned a Social Security number. Many older entries lack death dates because they were created before digital record-keeping. A 2023 audit found nearly 19 million such cases, but the government chose not to fix them due to high costs and minimal impact.
The Social Security Administration also has safeguards in place. Payments automatically stop at age 115, and recipients are periodically checked through Medicare use to confirm they're still alive.
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