The US Department of Agriculture has spent the past week notifying people that the country is (allegedly) overrun by individuals who are fraudulently claiming SNAP benefits, while (allegedly) driving luxury vehicles.
“In just ONE state, 14,000 individuals receiving SNAP benefits were driving LUXURY VEHICLES!” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins posted on X last week. The official USDA account made similar claims, which were then amplified by figures like Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Rand Paul.
Those numbers are questionable at best. For one thing, the report they come from doesn’t name the state where thousands of people are allegedly buying Ferraris while using government money to buy food. For another, that report doesn’t include any explanation of its methodology.
There’s also no knowing what folks had when the floor fell out from under them. That Escalade might have been half paid off when they lost their source of income. Conservatives’ve been on this same bullshit for decades.
“He obviously took advantage of the system or did something illegal like selling drugs. Everyone knows it’s systematically impossible for a minority to get ahead on their own”
Maybe a little too on the nose, but all their arguments are some variation of that.