Did you hear the one about the 360-year-old who’s still kicking around inside the Social Security database? Or the millions of centenarians — some as old as 160 — who might be stealing your hard-earned benefits?

If you watched chaos King Donald Trump’s marathon state-of-confusion address to Congress, you heard all that and a lot more. Trump dealt disinformation between standing ovations from Republicans and corny protests from Democrats for a numbing one hour, 39 minutes and 32 seconds. He spoke nearly 10,000 words.

I’ll try to be briefer.

This week, Trump’s bullying tough talk on tariffs morphed into a scene from Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Kramden character in The Honeymooners. “One of these days, Canada — Pow! Right in the kisser! To the moon, Mexico! To the moon, China!”

Tariffs are on again, then off again. They’re up 25 percent, then they’re half off for good behavior. And now the convenient carve outs have begun for the automobile industry, along with the monthly reprieve from the wrath of Don for our neighboring nations and biggest trading partners.

You know we’re in trouble when The Wall Street Journal reminds its reader of what’s at stake with a headline that reads, “Tariff War Risks Sinking World Into New Great Depression, International Chamber of Commerce Warns.” The newspaper’s Monday editorial was withering. Among its nose-bloodiers: “We’ve courted Mr. Trump’s ire by calling the Mexico and Canada levies the ‘dumbest’ in history, and we may have understated the point. Mr. Trump is whacking friends, not adversaries.”

Then there’s Trump’s lie that long-dead members of your family tree are still collecting their Social Security checks. It’s a false claim his peripatetic pal Elon Musk has been spreading far and wide. (The fact is, improper Social Security payments amount to less than 1 percent.)

Of course, Musk also calls Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” — even larger than his relationship with the federal government. It’s a ridiculous lie, but one Republicans can’t stop telling.

At this point, you can’t be blamed for not knowing whether to run out and buy a Ford, eat an avocado or set a place at the table for the ghost of your great-great granddad.

But the sowing of chaos is part of the strategy. Without it, you might begin to suspect he’s in the process of gutting the federal government and selling it off — but not in the name of efficiency, savings, a balanced budget or the benefit of the angry Americans he claims to identify with.

Trump and his Musk-led DOGE minions are throwing a scare in the country as they prime the pump for what congressional Republicans admit is coming next: making permanent Trump’s 2017 tax cut that benefited the nation’s wealthiest citizens. The plan is projected to reduce federal revenue by approximately $4.5 trillion over the next decade. It is expected to hit those who can least afford it. The GOP’s budget makes cuts to Medicare and Medicaid all but assured.

In Nevada, federal employees have been furloughed or threatened with termination throughout the system. That includes Government Services Administration workers who maintain federal courthouses and other buildings, who lost their jobs just ahead of the Trump administration’s admission that it intends to sell off more than 400 federal buildings nationwide.

It wasn’t the number of the state’s lost GSA jobs, but the recklessness of the terminations that appears to have alarmed Nevada’s senior Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) most. She wrote on social media, “Social Security workers, U.S. Marshals, the Army Corps of Engineers … rely on the GSA to keep their buildings safe and functioning so they can do their jobs and serve Nevadans. Now that's in jeopardy. Why is Donald Trump eliminating the support that keeps our federal courtrooms functioning? He must want to make it harder for judges to do their jobs.”

Most of the state’s congressional delegation echoed the sentiment. The expected exception was Nevada’s lone Republican Rep. Mark Amodei. In his Friday Washington Recap news release, he called the chaos a “fast-paced sprint” and Trump’s widely panned speech “a strong message to Congress.” He continued, “We have a long way to go, but I’m satisfied with all the President has accomplished thus far, and I am optimistic about the direction our nation is headed.”

But there’s a reason that Republican members of Congress are ducking out of town hall meetings across the country. The proposed cuts don’t discriminate by political party, tariffs are a ticket to a depressed economy and mass layoffs will put even more stress on state’s already panicked.

If you want something to be mad about, consider the reorganization plan of the Department of Veterans Affairs that will slash 80,000 jobs from the agency that provides health care for retired military service personnel. Nevada ranks seventh in the nation for veterans per capita, and you can believe many of them voted for Trump.

Like their fellow citizens across America, Nevadans are challenged to keep up with Trump’s manic threats and dangerous attempts to fracture the structure of the federal government. The chaos has already done damage to the country, but by Thursday the foundering president made yet another reversal. He informed members of the Cabinet that they, not Musk, will be responsible for the cuts to staff and structure that he seeks.

That won’t provide comfort for the many thousands of citizens and businesses sure to be affected by the slashing, but it shows Trump’s chaos has a purpose beyond reminding Americans of his incompetence.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Readers Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.