By Meryl Kornfield, Naftali Bendavid · The Washington Post (c) 2025
Former president Joe Biden is scheduled Tuesday evening to deliver his first public comments since leaving the White House, speaking on the importance of Social Security after 12 weeks in which President Donald Trump has regularly excoriated his predecessor while Biden has kept quiet.
Biden – speaking to a gathering of advocates for disabled people – is expected to address the future of the premier program for elderly and disabled Americans, which under Trump has faced website outages, technical glitches, unanswered phone lines and other problems amid Elon Musk’s cost-cutting efforts.
It is not clear how directly or harshly Biden will criticize Trump and the direction he is taking the country. But Democrats have seized on the struggles at the Social Security Administration to hammer home a broader message that Trump is pursuing a chaotic agenda at the expense of ordinary Americans. Spending cuts and firings championed by Musk and the U.S. DOGE Service have complicated GOP efforts to address the volatile political issue.
“Social Security is a sacred promise between generations,” said former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley (D), who headed the Social Security Administration under Biden. “It’s a promise that ensures dignity in retirement, security after tragedy, and support for those with disabilities.” O’Malley now chairs the advisory board of Advocates, Counselors and Representatives for the Disabled (ACRD), the group hosting Biden in Chicago.
Social Security has long been a battlefield between the two parties, as Republicans suggest overhauling the program to cut costs and put the program on a sounder financial footing. Democrats argue that such cuts would hurt elderly and disabled Americans, especially if they are used to subsidize tax cuts for the wealthy.
Tuesday’s speech carries a political drama that goes far beyond the future of the program itself.
Biden is the sole politician to defeat Trump, having driven him from the White House in 2020 after a campaign in which he portrayed Trump as immoral and unfit to serve. Trump has never accepted that defeat, alleging falsely and repeatedly that the election was stolen and insulting Biden as “Sleepy Joe” or “Crooked Joe.”
Even after Biden ceded the 2024 Democratic nomination to then-Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump often seemed to attack Biden as much as Harris. And since taking office in January, Trump has repeatedly slammed Biden, blaming him for problems such as inflation and the Russia-Ukraine war that Trump promised to fix instantly but is struggling to address.
As recently as Monday, Trump posted on Truth Social, “The War between Russia and Ukraine is Biden’s war, not mine.” He added that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “and Crooked Joe Biden did an absolutely horrible job in allowing this travesty to begin.”
In an address to a joint session of Congress on March 4, Trump declared that Biden was “the worst president in American history,” mocking him for the surge of undocumented immigrants over the U.S.-Mexico border during his tenure.
Biden, in contrast, has followed the tradition in which presidents avoid criticizing their successors. He welcomed Trump to the White House after the election, and he has not spoken publicly since Inauguration Day – until now.
But as a growing number of Democrats voice their frustration at Trump’s unprecedented moves to cut the government, circumvent Congress and challenge the courts, former president Barack Obama did take him on, indirectly at least, in a recent talk at Hamilton College in New York.
Without mentioning Trump by name, Obama suggested that the United States is at risk of abandoning “this basic idea that we are a rules-based society.” He added, “This is the first time I’ve been speaking publicly for a while … It is up to all of us to fix this.”
As Trump has opened his second presidency with a rapid-fire barrage of edicts and actions, Democrats have seemed stunned at times and have struggled to unite behind a coherent message. The president’s on-again, off-again tariff announcements, which have rattled the markets and forecast higher prices, have given them a potential rallying point.
Social Security may be another. Politicians for years have hesitated to suggest cuts in the program, which serves 73 million Americans, in recognition of its popularity and the sense of many Americans that after a lifetime of paying into the program, they deserve its benefits.
Musk raised the issue in colorful fashion in an appearance on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast several weeks ago, calling Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” Musk argued that the amount being paid into the system is dwarfed by its future obligations.
In his March address to Congress, Trump cited “shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors and that our seniors and people that we love rely on.” He complained that the program is paying money to thousands of people who are purportedly 160 years old or older, a claim that has repeatedly been debunked.
The Social Security Administration, in its 2024 annual report, found that its trust fund for the elderly would be able to pay 100 percent of its scheduled benefits only until 2033. Unless changes are made, the fund’s reserves would be depleted, and only 79 percent of benefits could be paid at that point.
Democrats contend that regardless of what changes are needed, Trump’s actions are making the situation worse. The Social Security Administration has lost 7,000 employees under the streamlining efforts of Trump and Musk, with thousands more planned.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts) is among those spearheading Democrats’ efforts to seize on the issue.
“We’re fighting back on behalf of every single senior, every single parent of a kid with a disability supported by Social Security, every single person currently paying into the program for later down the line, and every American who cares that seniors can retire with dignity,” Warren said in a recent statement.