“Government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old... money is being paid to many of them.”

No one in the United States is older than 116, and the Social Security Administration itself debunked this before Trump said it. On February 19, 2025, two weeks before the speech, acting SSA commissioner Lee Dudek explained that people listed as over 100 in the system are "not necessarily receiving benefits"; they are simply records missing a date of death. The actual numbers are tiny. A 2023 SSA Inspector General report found 18.9 million people born in 1920 or earlier with no death record in the database, but only about 44,000 of them were receiving any payments, and the Census counted just 80,139 living Americans aged 100 or older in 2020. SSA has also run an automated process since 2015 that terminates benefits for anyone listed as 115 or older.

Improper payments do exist, and they are a rounding error, not a scandal: the SSA Inspector General's 2024 audit found $72 billion in improper payments across 2015–2022, which is under 1% of the $8.6 trillion paid out in that period, and most improper payments are overpayments to living beneficiaries, not checks to phantom 150-year-olds. CBS News rated Trump's claim false.

"These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits." — Lee Dudek, Acting Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, February 19, 2025