Sen. Bernie Sanders set fire to a falsehood the Trump administration has repeatedly pushed about Social Security during a CNN town hall Wednesday night, when the independent Vermont senator called President Donald Trump’s claim that payments are being made to millions of dead people “just another lie.”

“Trump gets up in his State of the Union, and all of you, many of you have heard it, and he says, oh, my goodness, millions and millions of senior citizens, 150 years age, 200 years of age. Remember that? Oh, they’re all getting Social Security benefits,” Sanders said of Trump’s speech before Congress last month.

“It’s a lie, a total, absolute lie,” he went on. “I mean, according to the new guy who is going to become the Social Security administrator, Trump’s own appointee, well over 99% of the benefits owed to people on Social Security were earned by the people on Social Security. It’s just another lie.”

Trump has repeatedly pushed this false claim, even turning it into a laughing spectacle during his March address to Congress.

“Over 130,000 people, according to the Social Security databases, are aged over 160 years old,” he said. “And money is being paid to many of them and we’re searching for many of them right now.”

After Trump spoke about the payments in February, his own acting Social Security commissioner issued a statement that debunked the claim, saying the agency has records of people with no date of death associated with them, but that doesn’t mean they’re continuing to receive payments.

“These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits,” acting Commissioner Leland Dudek said.

The Social Security Administration additionally has an automated process that terminates benefits for those age 115 or older.

Vice President JD Vance has also spouted this claim about the deceased receiving checks, saying in an interview with Fox News earlier this month that nearly half of all calls it receives are fraudulent.

“You look at people who are 150 years old who are fraudulently collecting Social Security payments. You see our Social Security system, 40% of the people who are calling in are actually committing fraud. That means the 60% who need their Social Security checks are waiting in line,” he said.

Vance did not back up this claim with any evidence, though it may be related to the SSA reporting in March that “approximately 40 percent of Social Security direct deposit fraud is associated with someone calling SSA to change direct deposit bank information.”

Billionaire Elon Musk, who is currently serving as a Trump senior adviser, has also claimed without evidence that 40% of all calls to Social Security are fraudulent.

Sanders and other politicians have accused Trump of purposely spreading false fraud allegations about the Social Security system as a means to dismantle it.

“That is an outrageous lie, intended to lay the groundwork for cuts to Social Security and dismantling the most successful and popular government program in history,” Sanders said in a response to Trump’s congressional speech in March.

“So let’s be clear about that. Well over 99% of Social Security checks are going out to people who earned those checks. 70 million Americans,” he said.

The Trump administration has claimed it “will always protect” Social Security, Medicaid and Medicaid benefits and that it is only trying to reduce the amount of fraudulent spending in the programs.

Last month it pointed to the SSA reporting that it made nearly $72 billion in improper payments from about 2015 to 2022, which the SSA said were mostly overpayments.

“While this is less than 1 percent of the total benefits paid during that period, at the end of FY 2023, SSA had an uncollected overpayment balance of $23 billion,” the Office of the Inspector General said.