Tonight’s NBC Nightly News reporting on the Senate hearing to confirm business executive Frank Bisignano as head of the Social Security Administration had a familiar sound to it. If you listen closely enough, you’ll hear the kind of fearmongering that was a staple of a bygone era.
Watch the report in its entirety, as aired on NBC Nightly News on Tuesday, March 25th, 2025 (click “expand” to view transcript):
LESTER HOLT: On Capitol Hill, the Senate held a confirmation hearing for President Trump's nominee to lead the Social Security Administration. The agency is facing deep cuts and many Americans are worried that could impact their benefits. Here's Ryan nobles.
RYAN NOBLES: Denise Perishak is a 70-year-old retired nurse from Pennsylvania who relies every day on her check from Social Security.
DENISE PERISHAK: It's just something that we always counted on.
NOBLES: She's one of millions of Americans who paid into the system and now worries about the impact of potential changes from President Trump and Elon Musk.
PERISHAK: Just looking at being able to provide three basic meals for each oth- for ourselves because if Social Security were eliminated, I mean, it's just -- I can't even think about how terrible that would be.
NOBLES: Musk has openly attacked Social Security.
ELON MUSK: Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.
NOBLES: Enter Frank Bisignano, the former CEO of the financial services company Fiserv, tapped by Trump to run the program. Today promising no one's benefits would be impacted, despite planned staffing cuts and office closures.
ELIZABETH WARREN: Are you willing to commit right now that you will put enough people back to work so they can do the job of delivering the benefits that Americans earned?
FRANK BISIGNANO: I will --
WARREN: Yes or no.
BISIGNANO: I will commit to have the right staffing to get the job done.
NOBLES: Congressional Republicans are on a mission to cut as much as $2 trillion in federal spending, a task that won't be easy without impacting programs like Social Security. Some expressing their fears at fiery town halls across America. Republicans insist they plan to focus on potential waste, fraud, and abuse, and hope to automate some services.
RON JOHNSON: I don't think there's a business in the private sector that‘s probably operating with the antiquated type of IT system that government agencies have. Why can’t we upgrade those?
NOBLES: But for seniors like Denise, abrupt tech-savvy changes could be a huge challenge.
PERISHAK: Social Security and Medicare should be -- that should never be on the chopping block at all.
NOBLES: And there are reports of the agency's website crashing, and long waits for help on the phone. A 2024 survey revealed that 72% of Americans worry Social Security could run out of funding in their lifetime. Lester.
HOLT: All right. Ryan, thank you.
If you listen closely enough, you’ll get taken back to the late ‘aughts and early teens, when Democrat messaging centered around scaring seniors into believing that evil Republicans were out to gut Social Security. One widely mocked ad featured a Paul Ryan lookalike wheeling an elderly woman to a cliff and throwing her right off.
This is, basically, the tone of Ryan Nobles’ item on Bisignano’s confirmation hearing. Nobles found a willing senior to play the role of frightened grandma as he advocated on behalf of the program, casting President Donald Trump and Tesla/SpaceX founder Elon Musk as the proverbial Paul Ryans holding Grandma’s wheelchair at the cliff’s edge.
In order to be credible, this report relies both on a willing suspension of disbelief and on a major omission: President Trump’s own commitment to preserve Social Security and Medicare. None of this gets mentioned at any point in the report. Instead, Nobles interchanges efficiency cuts with cuts to the program itself. Deceptive stuff intent on scaring seniors into voting Democrat. The Resistance Media is in high gear.
