In his address to a joint session of Congress, President Donald Trump repeated the claim he and Elon Musk have made tens of millions of dead people over age 100 are receiving Social Security payments.

“Over 130,000 people, according to the Social Security databases, are aged over 160 years old. We have a healthier country than I thought, Bobby,” Trump said in an apparent reference to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Trump said: “Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119.”

The databases may list those people, but that does not mean they are getting paid benefits, as Trump implied.

Social Security’s acting administrator, Lee Dudek, said last month: “The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits.”

Part of the confusion comes from Social Security’s software system, which is based on the COBOL programming language and has a lack of date type. This means that some entries with missing or incomplete birthdates will default to a reference point of more than 150 years ago.