Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / Sheldon Whitehouse Accuses Musk Of Using DOGE To Undermine Social Security In Push To Privatize It

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Sheldon Whitehouse Accuses Musk Of Using DOGE To Undermine Social Security In Push To Privatize It · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:01
  Madam President, I'm pleased to supplement the remarks of our
• 0:06
  distinguished leader with respect to Social Security Rhode
• 0:09
  Island, as, I believe the largest participation per capita
• 0:13
  of Social Security in the country.
• 0:15
  Social Security is what brought American seniors out of poverty
• 0:19
  into a distinguished and fair retirement.
• 0:25
  And it really matters that we defend it and that Social
• 0:29
  Security remain unbroken. The threat is pretty clear.
• 0:36
  The president keeps talking about imaginary fraud.
• 0:40
  Why would you talk about imaginary fraud in the system
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  unless you have some motive? And it wasn't just him.
• 0:47
  Elon Musk talked relentlessly about fraud in the Social
• 0:50
  Security system. The Secretary of Commerce went a
• 0:54
  mile out of his lane to add a shot at Social Security being
• 1:00
  riddled with fraud, and then the president went to the other
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  building, the other end of the building there stood at the
• 1:06
  rostrum of the house and lied to the American people, flat out
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  lied to the American people about Social Security fraud.
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  He let Elon Musk call it a Ponzi scheme as well.
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  This is a battering ram of misinformation and
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  disinformation, and it doesn't happen without a motive.
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  And the motive here is to degrade public confidence and
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  Social Security. The same time you send what I
• 1:35
  call your little Muskrats, you send your Muskrats into Social
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  Security to disrupt its operations so that you have the
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  rhetorical attack happening over here.
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  And then you begin to have Social Security fail because you
• 1:51
  broke it and get what has been referred to as an interruption
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  of benefits, an interruption of benefits.
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  And then you also have your private equity people and your
• 2:04
  tech Bros over there so that when the interruption of
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  benefits happens, they can come in swoop to the rescue of the
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  problem that the administration caused.
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  And next thing you know, what have you got privatized Social
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  Security with private equity guys and tech Bros running the
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  show because thousands of the employees who know how to run
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  the Social Security Administration have been forced
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  out. That's the concern, and it's a
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  very real concern. I want to give Mr. Bizzignano
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  good remark, good marks for saying that he's not going
• 2:47
  there. He said that he will not
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  privatize the agency, will not. He said that under his
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  leadership, the Social Security Administration will remain a
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  government agency and remain an agency that is run for the
• 3:02
  benefit of the American people and benefit recipients.
• 3:07
  Now, the problem is I find nominations statements hard to
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  believe up against the power of that pressure from the White
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  House and from Musk and from the secretary of Commerce and from
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  whoever else is trying to accomplish the Republican
• 3:29
  extremist goal for decades of getting rid of Social Security.
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  So I have, I was a no vote in committee.
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  I'm going to be a no vote out here.
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  I hope very much that I'm wrong, but I also hope very much that
• 3:44
  Secretary Rubio would stand up for Ukraine and that he'd be an
• 3:47
  anchor as Secretary of State to defend Ukraine against the
• 3:50
  predatory, brutal, criminal war crimes of Vladimir Putin.
• 3:55
  But what we've seen instead has been the Putinization of our
• 4:00
  strategy to Ukraine. And the Secretary of State has
• 4:04
  been entirely complicit in it from all the signs that I see.
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  So when you have somebody who says one thing, and in the case
• 4:12
  of Secretary Rubio, who actually lived it, he was actually an
• 4:15
  ardent advocate for defending Ukraine, and then you get into
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  Trump zone and suddenly all your principles disappear, all your
• 4:24
  commitments disappear. Everything just becomes you just
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  become a tool of the Trump political operation.
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  I've seen that too often. So I'm going to vote no.
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  We need as a Senate to send a clear message that Social
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  Security is inviolable. That is a promise amongst us all
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  as Americans to protect our seniors, to protect ourselves
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  when we get to that age, and that no one will be allowed to
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  break it. And one of the things I'm going
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  to ask is to make sure that we go into Social Security's
• 4:58
  databases and make sure that those muskrats, when they went
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  in there, didn't do any permanent damage, didn't set off
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  mines to go off later, and didn't leave back doors for the
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  information to be exfiltrated out to private sector folks for
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  whom it's as good as gold. I'll say one last thing, and
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  that is that Mister Beziano said he would work with me on the
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  Benefit Cliffs, where you're fine at full benefits, and then
• 5:29
  one little thing happens, you miss 1 little mark, and it's a
• 5:32
  complete crash. There's a better way to deal
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  with that. Benefit Cliff smoothing is a
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  technical thing. He promised he would work with
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  me. I intend to hold him to that
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  promise. And my friend Mr. Cornyn, the
• 5:43
  senator from Texas, has been patiently waiting.
• 5:45
  So I will yield the floor now to him.