Donald Trump recently appointed a new acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration after Michelle King suddenly resigned from her position. King, who worked for the agency for 30 years, took up the new position of acting commissioner last month when Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th POTUS. However, her new role was short lived, courtesy of Elon Musk.
She resigned after a heated clash with Elon Musk, the head of Trump’s newly founded DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). As per Washington Post, she refused to give Musk’s DOGE access to sensitive records of American citizens with a Social Security number. This includes information about their addresses, incomes, retirement benefits and medical records.
President Trump replaced her with Leland Dudek as acting commissioner, who has led Social Security’s anti-fraud office previously. Meanwhile, Trump waits Senate’s confirmation on Frank Bisignano, who is President’s top pick to lead Social Security admin full time.
Meanwhile, Trump has stirred a new controversy over Michelle King’s resignation. In a latest press briefing, he hinted that King didn’t resign, but was fired by Trump’s administration. During Tuesday’s media interaction at Mar-a-Lago, a reporter mentioned about King’s resignation.
Trump swiftly asked, “Who resigned?” to which the reporter replied, “The head of Social Security.”
The President then said, “I don’t know. I mean, I– resigned or got fired. I think I fired. You know, when you fire somebody, they always resign and then they say, “We resigned.”
Trump then referred to the controversial claims made by Musk that the Social Security administration was committing fraud by apparently giving away checks to people born in the 1870s. He said, “When you have numbers like that, I think, really, it’s, got fired. They have to get fired. Who would keep them? How could you have numbers like this? The big thing is, how many of these people got paid? Were they getting paid? How many of them were getting paid Social Security? Because if that’s the case, it’s a massive fraud.”
Trump’s recent statement fascinates us as he now suddenly claims that King was fired. In cases like this, people often question his sanity, wondering if he makes things up to boost his image among people.
In his attempt to expose Social Security’s alleged fraud, Musk wrote in a tweet, “According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE! Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security.”
According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!
Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/ltb06VX98Z
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2025
However, a detailed report by the New York Post rubbished Musk’s claims that people more than 150 years old were claiming the benefits. It confirmed that although the data lists people over 100 years of age, “around 44,000 were actually receiving benefits, with 13 of those older than 112.”
The debunking of Musk’s far-fetched claims and outrage at King’s resignation brings us back to ponder upon Trump’s claim that he intentionally fired King. People often attribute Trump’s confusing statements to his alleged dementia. Recently, Trump said in an interview with Fox News that Canada would be “much better off” as a state of the US.
He stated, “We lose $200 billion a year with Canada, and I’m not going to let that happen. It’s too much. Why are we paying $200 billion a year essentially in subsidy to Canada?” However, he never explained the $200 billion, leading people to believe that he was quoting random numbers to prove his point.
