Right-Wing Media Echo GOP in Scaring Senior Citizens

By Kevin Howley, October 19, 2022

The Party of Trump and its cheerleaders in right wing media are heading into the midterm homestretch with a grift befitting the twice-impeached former president: scaring senior citizens with leftist bogeymen — think 87,000 armed IRS agents coming for YOUR MONEY!—only to swindle those same seniors of their Social Security and Medicare benefits when they take control of Congress.

Credit the right wing noise machine for amplifying hot-button issues like border security, crime, and inflation—effectively dominating the national conversation—despite the deluge of revelations regarding the rampant criminality of one Donald J. Trump: standard-bearer of the “party of law and order.”

Bait & Switch Season

Ahead of the 2022 midterms, these time-tested Republican talking points serve two discrete functions: First, they work to obscure genuinely good news for seniors under the Biden administration.

Indeed, according to The Hill, a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll finds that only “36 percent of Americans said they were aware that the Inflation Reduction Act allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices; 29 percent said they knew the law put a cap on insulin prices for people on Medicare and only 29 percent said they knew about a cap on out of pocket prescription drug costs.”

That’s all good news for Medicare recipients, but the vast majority of Americans didn’t get the memo. Ditto the Biden administration’s recent announcement of historic cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security recipients.

Second, and more critically, the GOP’s tough on crime, tax cutting, and government accountability messaging diverts press and public attention away from GOP’s plans to gut Medicare and Social Security.

Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans put it plainly: “Republicans in the House and Senate and on the campaign trail are tripping over each other to put forward their own extreme and risky schemes to cut or end Social Security as we know it.”

Long on patriotic bluster and short on specifics the Republican’s 2022 platform, the dubiously dubbed Commitment to America, is a classic bait and switch: a get rich quick scheme for vulture capitalists eager to pick clean the bones of the poor, the infirmed, and the elderly.

“Bad Actors Targeting Seniors”

In a recent email to constituents, Trey Hollingsworth (R-IN 9) writes: “Scammers are taking advantage of the technological divide between seniors and younger generations, employing phishing schemes, charity ruses, and even pretending to be family members in order to get access to elders’ financial information.”

Without a hint of irony, let alone a pang of guilt, conservative politicians and publishers are lamenting the rise of “elder fraud.” All the while ginning up fears of economic calamity, food shortages, and tax hikes targeting retirement accounts — and advising seniors to invest in what the grandkids might call “shady securities” like “American Alternative Assets,” “American Hartford Gold,” and, a personal favorite, “Goldco,” Fox News shill Sean Hannity’s preferred precious metals company.

Every day, right wing outlets blast dozens of emails to subscribers, much of it sponsored-content, warning readers of the catastrophic effects of Bidenflation. Headlined, “Chuck Norris: Biden Fires Warning Shot,” a recent phishing scam courtesy of WND encourages retirees to sign up for a free IRS Loophole kit.

The email concludes with a smiling Chuck Norris advising seniors to “Discover the 2022 IRS Loophole … I did.”

Is this what Trey Hollingsworth means when he says “bad actors are targeting seniors for their savings”?

Asking for a friend.

Kevin Howley is a writer and educator whose work has appeared in Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, Social Movement Studies, and Interactions: Studies in Communication and Culture. His most recent book is Drones: Media Discourse and the Public Imagination.

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