FDR started Social Security. Ninety years later, his grandson, Boston lawyer Jim Roosevelt, wants to save it.

Social Security, the $1.5 trillion program that sends retirement, survivor, and disability payments to about 73 million Americans, has personal significance for Roosevelt. His grandfather, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, signed the Social Security Act into law in 1935.

Ninety years later, Jim Roosevelt said President Trump and his advisor Elon Musk are “trying to hollow out Social Security” and “undermine confidence in the system” by weakening the agency that manages the program.

His concern comes amid conflicting statements from the administration. Trump has repeatedly said he doesn’t plan to touch Social Security benefits, while Musk, who heads the newly established cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, has likened Social Security — a social insurance program — to a “Ponzi scheme.”

Asked to clarify, Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said in a statement: “Any American receiving Social Security benefits will continue to receive them. The sole mission of DOGE is to identify waste, fraud, and abuse only.”

In an interview, Roosevelt shared his thoughts on the future of the program. When assessing seemingly contradictory statements from the Trump administration, he advised: “Believe what you see, don’t believe what they say.” The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Social Security was set up to be untouchable. That’s the reason it has its own dedicated funding source in the payroll tax. And you can listen to what my grandfather said about it or what Dwight Eisenhower said about it. They said any president who tried to take it away would be stupid and not around very long. However, that does not seem to be a check on Donald Trump and, in particular, on Elon Musk. They are trying to hollow out Social Security from the inside instead of doing away with it through legislation. … I believe people will see what they’re doing. But the question is how soon, and will serious damage be done before that.

It was created by Congress, signed by President Franklin Roosevelt, and it is the law of the land. However, part of what Congress also does is appropriate the money for the people to run it. Elon Musk is firing those people. He’s fired so far 12 percent of the Social Security staff, and they were already at their lowest staffing level ever while having the highest number of beneficiaries ever. … These cuts in staff and closing of offices, which is the other thing Elon Musk is doing, are intended to make it harder for people to get their earned benefits. And there’s going to have to be pushback in the courts and in Congress.

It resonates with me in terms of [my] belief and heritage. It also resonates with me because I’ve paid my Social Security taxes all along also and I have earned benefits I expect to receive. … Social Security has always primarily been ‘pay as you go.’ Social Security tax is collected [through payroll deductions] and it’s paid out in retirement and disability benefits. It’s an insurance plan with earned benefits. … Musk doesn’t understand how it works. He calls it a ‘Ponzi scheme.’

Musk and Trump are trying to bring the New Deal era to a close. I don’t think it’s what the American people elected Trump to do. And they didn’t elect Elon Musk. The things that the New Deal did have become part of the fabric of American life. It’s not just Social Security and the things that followed in the same vein: Medicare and Medicaid. It’s also federal deposit insurance. It’s also loans to farmers. It’s lots of other things to make the American economy work and provide security for working Americans. … I think that Musk thinks that everyone should be on their own, the way they are in South Africa.

Every system makes a few mistakes. I don’t think there’s any entity that you deal with that you don’t have to sometimes call and say, ‘But I paid that bill.’ In fact, Social Security gets more right than any other system in the world probably, certainly in the United States. The overhead for administration is between 1.5 and 1 percent of their total benefits. It’s tiny. I’ve worked at a very efficient insurance company and the overhead was 10 percent. Errors do happen. Sometimes people get listed as dead because someone reports that the mail wasn’t delivered or something like that. And that has to get corrected. The idea that there are a lot of people [collecting benefits] who are impossibly old, that’s just fantasy.

Social Security always has to be updated periodically. The last time that was done significantly was in 1983 by Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill. It’s time for another update. … Generally it doesn’t happen until we’re right near a crisis… The trust fund was created as short-term working capital. They set aside money to take care of the [retiring] Baby Boomers. But it runs into trouble in 2035 because they calculated back then that the Baby Boomers wouldn’t be around anymore. Now with extensions in longevity, I’m hoping the Baby Boomers will still be around.

I believe that’s why they’re making all these cuts. So that people will say, ‘Well, government can’t run it. We’ll have it done by private enterprise.’ If they privatize it, the people who take it over will also want to take over managing the money. … The reason Social Security has always continued to be run by the government is that nobody except Wall Street financial folks thinks it’s good to put all of this money into the stock market.

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Robert Weisman can be reached at robert.weisman@globe.com.