A couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump’s controversial commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, appeared on a conservative podcast and reflected on Social Security beneficiaries. As he quickly discovered, that wasn’t a good idea.

“Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month,” the billionaire said. “My mother-in-law who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain. She just wouldn’t. She’d think something got messed up, and she’ll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining.”

It was offensive and wrong for a variety of reasons, and common sense suggested that members of the White House team would exercise far more caution on the subject going forward.

If that was the idea, however, it didn’t last. A week later, the president’s top campaign donor, Elon Musk, declared at a campaign event: “One interesting statistic was that 40% of the calls into Social Security were fraudulent, meaning that it was someone trying to get a Social Security payment that was going to a senior instead to go to a fraud ring.”

This week, JD Vance made his latest Fox News appearance, and the vice president echoed the line.

Referring to Musk and the Department of Government Operation, the Ohio Republican said: “You look at all of the fraudulent grants they found, you look at people who are 150 years old fraudulently collecting Social Security payments, you see our Social Security system, 40% of the people who are calling in are actually committing fraud. That means the 60% who need their Social Security checks are waiting in line.”

For now, let’s put aside the fact that DOGE has not, in reality, uncovered a flood of fraudulent grants. Also, let’s not dwell on the fact that the claims about 150-year-old Social Security beneficiaries have already been discredited, as Vance really ought to know.

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Let’s instead focus on the idea that 40% of people calling into the Social Security hotline are fraudsters. Is that true? The New York Times published a fact-check report noting that the claim is rooted in a misunderstood statistic from the Social Security Administration.

The agency recently estimated that 40 percent of direct deposit fraud, one specific type of fraud, occurred via calls to the agency. That is not the same thing as 40 percent of all telephone calls being fraudulent. … It is unclear what percentage of calls are requests for information or forms and what percentage are requests for services that directly affect benefits. But there is no evidence that 40 percent of answered calls, or 20 million to 24 million annually, fraudulently reroute benefits.

When Musk got this wrong, he at least had a plausible excuse: The Republican megadonor has no real background in government or public policy, so it was easy to understand why he would peddle a bogus claim about a system he failed to understand.

But Vance is a former senator and now an elected national officeholder. It’s hardly unreasonable to think he should know better.

The larger question, though, is whether he does know better. Last fall, as Election Day approached, Vance lied about Haitian immigrants living in Springfield, Ohio. When he was pressed to explain why he said things that were untrue about a community in his own state, Vance said that he was willing “to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention.”

All of which leaves us with a familiar question about the reality-challenged vice president: Was he simply wrong about the 40% claim, or was this an instance in which Vance was simply creating stories in pursuit of a political goal?