Martin O'Malley
speaker
45 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Martin O'Malley’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Thank you for your reporting on this. Really, really appreciate it.
Sure, there are many ramifications. I mean, if you suddenly appear in the death master file, that's not only for Social Security. Social Security, by law and congressional statute, maintains that death master file. But all sorts of banking institutions, credit institutions, states... You know, departments of, you know, health, food stamps, Medicaid, they all ping off of that.
So if they find out, if they're told that somebody's dead, they cut off those benefits. So this has grave ramifications. And as you pointed out, Rachel, if they can do this. To people who came to this country illegally, they can do this to any of us.
This is the first time we've ever seen this unlawful criminal corruption of the data of the American people that's contained at Social Security, which, by the way, those employees protect and always have protected with a sacred vow.
Well, there are many lawsuits. One of them just today, a former deputy at Social Security filed another declaration just today outlining, you know, just how outrageous this is. So this will definitely be going to court. And there's a lot of lawyers out there who see that this this program of Social Security is being deconstructed before our very eyes. In fact, I'm out here in Chicago.
There will be a conference tomorrow of a new group of advocates and counselors and representatives for people with disability. And President Biden will be speaking there for the very first time after leaving office. And I can guarantee you President Biden will be speaking very directly to this gutting of Social Security with a chainsaw.
Absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, I think the attorney generals play a really important role right now. I think it's only a matter of time before one of them figures out how to file state kidnapping charges. against those that are abducting people who are in this country legally and sending them to this new concentration camp that Donald Trump laughs about having created in El Salvador.
Attorney generals are going to play a critically important role in these days ahead fighting this fascist moment in American history.
Good to be with you again, Rachel. Wish it weren't under these circumstances. So how do you want to unpack this?
Yeah, I would imagine that they were trying to go after personal identifying information on all of us. I mean, this is an agency that collects a lot of data. Every job we've ever had since our very first job, they keep track of those earnings. And there are a lot of laws in place that protect the privacy of that information. In fact,
The very first regulation Social Security ever issued back in 1934, when FDR signed it into being, was to promise the American people we would protect their personal identifying information.
So one of the things I learned in leading the great men and women at Social Security, who, by the way, are serving more and more customers every day with staffing that House Republicans have reduced to a 50-year low. But one of the things I learned about the culture of the place was that The folks there really take very seriously their duty to protect our personal identifying information.
So it does not surprise me at all that Michelle King, who I know very well and who I served with, a woman beyond reproach, a career civil servant who loves the agency and believes in the mission, that she would not allow herself to be an accomplice
to any violation of law or the sacred duty that she's been taught her whole life to abide by, which is to protect people's personal identifying information. I mean, that's a fireable offense at the agency. No doubt Michelle and her role as being the person that oversaw operations when I was
commissioner of social security for president Biden, she probably had to dismiss employees for browsing, you know, looking at the personal data of other people. And that was also something that we would, you know, not infrequently refer to the inspector general for possible criminal prosecution. But now we can't do that because the co-presidents whacked all of them in the first week.
Oh, I think so. I mean, these laws came into place, let's keep in mind, after 1974 and the abuse of power in Watergate, which in hindsight looks almost kind of quaint compared to the shredding of the Constitution that we see every day happening by the co-presidents, Musk and Trump. And And they're out of disregard for laws and norms.
So I would think it would be actionable, except for the fact that he controls the FBI and the prosecutorial powders that should bring it to action. But perhaps creative lawyers will find a way to call the question in front of a court. You know, the real threat to this agency and what's going to crater it, though, Rachel,
is actually reducing its staff to even lower than the 50-year low that it finds itself in right now. And I don't know if it's their plan to crater it or if they're just so ignorant of how stressed it is that they don't realize they could interrupt benefits.
And let's keep in mind, these are lifelines for 72 and a half million Americans, and half of all seniors living alone depend entirely on Social Security. So I do believe this will probably be the first beloved program by Americans that these Doge boys break. And they're on their way to doing it by driving people out of the agency.
Total horse hockey. There are not like cadavers wandering all around the continent of the United States with Social Security benefit checks flowing out of their pocket. This is totally untrue. They spew stuff and they throw things because of the nitwit 19-year-olds that don't understand the program or its database or its COBOL technology. And they just spew this stuff. So
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