Over the weekend, 71 million folks—anybody who has ever created an account on the Social Safety Administration’s web site—obtained an unhinged partisan e mail mendacity about how President Donald Trump’s Large Stunning Invoice “eliminates federal income taxes on Social Security benefits for most beneficiaries.” It additionally floridly praised Trump for reaffirming his “promise to protect Social Security” and says that the newly signed regulation “helps ensure that seniors can better enjoy the retirement they’ve earned.”
We all know that’s a lie. We additionally know the media is aware of it’s a lie. However they appear, as all the time, not prepared to fulfill the second. Reasonably than reporting on how there has by no means been such a nakedly partisan e mail from the SSA, and the way turning company communications into partisan boasts stuffed with lies undermines democracy, they’re desperately making an attempt to clarify it away.
Axios mentioned it was “unusual for the agency to blast an overtly political message to its massive email list, which includes retirees and those who’ve signed up at their website.”
“Unusual” implies that there’s a ordinary plan of action this barely diverges from, however that it’s additionally not wholly outdoors of the bounds of acceptable authorities communication. In actuality, it’s exceptional. It’s tiresome to do the “Imagine if President Joe Biden did this” factor, however truthfully, think about it. The media would lose their minds. It could be “But her emails” mixed with “Joe Biden is senile” instances 1,000.
It’s not that previous presidents haven’t had businesses blast out press releases touting their achievements. Right here’s one that Axios dug up from 2010, in its makes an attempt to characterize the Trumpy announcement as much like previous presidential communications. Within the outdated press launch, the then-head of Social Safety praised President Barack Obama’s “commitment to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government.”
That instance doesn’t actually assist Axios, although. First, the Obama-era announcement was a press launch, not one thing despatched to 71 million folks’s e mail inboxes indiscriminately. Second, the 2010 assertion was not in regards to the passage of a partisan tax regulation, however slightly, it was about how SSA now had new datasets obtainable for researchers. And eventually, in fact, that 2010 announcement was not primarily based on a lie.
Fairly merely, the Large Stunning Invoice has no language in it in any respect about eliminating federal earnings taxes on Social Safety. In actuality, the invoice does give seniors an additional tax deduction—however just for 4 years, as a result of the advantages ought to by no means last more than Trump, solely the tax cuts. However that deduction phases out primarily based on earnings, and doesn’t apply to any Social Safety recipients underneath 65, despite the fact that persons are eligible to start drawing Social Safety at 62.
Axios isn’t the one outlet that ought to are available in for blame right here. The New York Occasions mentioned that the Social Safety Administration had “circulated an imprecise email,” as if it have been inner communications a couple of potluck and it unintentionally mentioned Peggy was bringing chips, nevertheless it’s really Timmy. CNN characterised it as “stray[ing] from the agency’s typically apolitical nature.”
Trump is now circulating his supposed proof for the way it offers everybody the tax break his e mail promised. That proof is a scant little piece from Trump’s personal Council of Financial Advisers. It’s dated as “June 2025” and is available in at 4 pages, together with the title web page. Rigorous evaluation, this isn’t. However in fact, it’s already getting reported as correct.
In terms of Trump, the mainstream media is consistently engaged on this form of sanewashing, making an attempt to color Trump as only a bit off-kilter, slightly extra inclined towards some uncommon kinds of communication.
They know in addition to you do this the actions of the administration and the president are so out of pocket, so repulsive, so partisan that it needs to be on the entrance web page of each paper in America. However since that is Donald Trump, not Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris or Joe Biden, the media goes to maintain giving him cowl.
