When Senate Democrats tried to defeat Frank Bisignano’s nomination to serve as the commissioner of the Social Security Administration, they had plenty of rhetorical ammunition to work with. After all, as recently as February in an interview with CNBC, Bisignano described himself as “fundamentally a DOGE person,” which were four words the party seized on throughout the confirmation process.
Bisignano took steps to distance himself from DOGE-imposed changes at the Social Security Administration, though Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon produced a statement from a purported whistleblower, who claimed that Bisignano had personally intervened to get key DOGE officials involved at the agency.
The Senate’s Republican majority didn’t care, and Bisignano was confirmed earlier this month on a party-line vote.
Now that he’s been sworn in, the former businessman with no government experience is introducing himself to his new colleagues, though as ABC News reported, he appears to have gotten off to a shaky start.
The newly sworn-in head of the Social Security Administration told agency staff this week that when he was first offered the job in the Trump administration, he wasn’t familiar with the position and had to look it up online. Frank Bisignano, a former Wall Street executive, said during a town hall with Social Security managers from around the country on Wednesday that he wasn’t seeking a position in the Trump administration when he received a call about leading the SSA.
According to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by ABC News, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, Bisignano said: “So, I get a phone call and it’s about Social Security. And I’m really, I’m really not, I swear I’m not looking for a job. And I’m like, ‘Well, what am I going to do?’ So, I’m Googling Social Security. You know, one of my great skills, I’m one of the great Googlers on the East Coast.”
He added, “I’m like, ‘What the heck’s the commissioner of Social Security?’”
A spokesperson for the agency made no effort to deny the accuracy of the quote, instead saying that Bisignano was merely “poking fun at himself.”
Perhaps. But the fact that the new Social Security commissioner, up until recently, had no idea what the Social Security commissioner’s responsibilities entailed does not inspire confidence.
And right about now, some additional confidence about the Social Security Administration would go a long way. As the Republican administration imposed significant personnel cuts and closed Social Security offices, The New York Times reported last month on the intensifying “mess” within the system.
The Washington Post reported a day earlier that retirees and disabled people are “facing chronic website outages and other access problems.” The Wall Street Journal added that people who show up at Social Security offices are confronting multi-hour waits.
It doesn’t help that the administration is misusing the Social Security system in legally dubious ways; Elon Musk is slamming Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme”; and JD Vance is using his vice presidential platform to peddle discredited claims about the system.
Trump might’ve promised voters that Social Security would go untouched if he returned to the White House, but it’s already clear that the Republican White House has destabilized the system to a degree without modern precedent.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com