Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, left, and President Donald Trump.Tetiana Dzhafarova, Kevin Lamarque/The Associated Press
This article is part of The Globe’s initiative to cover disinformation and misinformation. E-mail us to share tips or feedback at disinfodesk@globeandmail.com.
In this regular update we examine some notable false and misleading stories that have been circulating online and the forces that shape the information we consume.
This week, a closer look at false statements that people 200 and older are receiving Social Security cheques in the United States. More on that below.
Trump‘s ‘disinformation space’
U.S. President Donald Trump made a series of false statements about Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky this week. Mr. Trump blamed Ukraine for starting the war with Russia, said Mr. Zelensky had a 4-per-cent approval rating and called him a dictator for not holding elections.
Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, in what the Russian government called a “special military operation.”
Polling by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that in the first half of February, 57 per cent of Ukrainians trusted Mr. Zelensky, while 37 per cent did not. The polling shows a decline, however, with trust in Mr. Zelensky at 64 per cent a year earlier.
In addressing the 4-per-cent approval rating claim, Mr. Zelensky said Wednesday that he had evidence the numbers came from Russia and that Mr. Trump was living in a “disinformation space.”
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday that President Donald Trump is living in a Russian “disinformation space” regarding his comments about the Ukrainian leader’s approval rating.
The Associated Press
Mr. Zelensky’s term was to have ended on May 20, 2024. But Ukraine has been under martial law since the 2022 invasion, and the country’s constitution dictates that elections must be suspended until martial law is lifted.
Ukraine’s cautionary tale for Canada
Staying with Ukraine, Lloyd Axworthy, a former foreign affairs minister and current chair of the World Refugee and Migration Council, wrote in The Globe about the lessons Canada can learn from Ukraine and its imperialist neighbour, Russia.
Mr. Axworthy’s column warns about the political and economic pressure the United States can bring to bear on Canada, as well as interfering in our elections.
He wrote: “With his tech-obsessed ally Elon Musk, Mr. Trump will likely work to manipulate our upcoming election, amplifying far-right candidates and undermining trust in our democratic system. Compared to what these two could unleash, past Russian and Chinese meddling might seem amateurish, just softening us up for the kill.”
Dead Americans aren’t receiving Social Security benefits
Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk have claimed that millions of people who are too old to be alive are receiving Social Security payments.
The Social Security Administration has since 2015 automatically cancelled payments when someone reaches the age of 115.
Mr. Musk posted a chart to X on Feb. 16 purporting to show the age breakdown of Social Security recipients, including some more than 200 years old and one over 300, but with no dollar amounts.
Mr. Trump reiterated the figures in Mr. Musk’s chart on Tuesday at a news conference where, reading from a sheet of paper, he listed the same age brackets and the number of supposed recipients.
A Feb. 13 post on X claimed the extreme ages for some recipients was linked to how dates are handled in COBOL, the programming language used at Social Security. This may have led to placeholder dates being used when actual birthdates were missing or incomplete, sometimes defaulting to dates that imply ages greater than 150.
A Social Security card.Jenny Kane/The Associated Press
The Associated Press reported that the Social Security Administration’s inspector-general had not established a new system to properly annotate death information in its database, which included around 19 million Social Security numbers of people born in 1920 or earlier but not marked as deceased.
AP said the agency decided not to update the database because it would have cost more than US$9-million.
This is not to suggest there is no Social Security fraud, but the amounts are very small compared with total payments. A 2024 report from the Social Security Administration’s inspector-general said that from fiscal years 2015 to 2022, it paid out almost US$8.6-trillion in benefits, with about US$71.8-billion, or around 0.8 per cent, in improper payments.
With a report from the Associated Press