Op-Ed: Making American Great Again?

The President and his henchmen, full of themselves, began implementing  their agenda at breakneck speed on a freezing January afternoon to install, pardon, and enrich their devoted loyalists. The White House assured the American people their clever and smart disrupters were agents of change and among the very best in our country.  They also promised these patriots would make America Great Again.

Pete Hegseth, now U.S. Secretary of Defense, couldn’t stop putting his foot in his mouth for four days last week in Germany while meeting with our closest allies and delivering key Putin talking points.  The Defense Secretary’s blunders and bluster on the world stage were especially painful when he declared the days of the United States using its military power and treasure to protect Europe were over, suggesting thousands of American troops might well be pulling out of Europe soon.  The Hegseth smackdown and threats were hardly in keeping with how most U.S. diplomats deliver a message to respected allies and partners who will surely be needed down the road. And while holding court, Mr. Hegseth informed Europeans leaders in no uncertain terms there would be no place for them or Ukraine at the table when President Trump sat down with Putin to decide terms and conditions for how that war would end, who would get what, and who would keep the peace and pay for keeping it.

The Secretary’s debut as leader of the U.S. armed forces and manager of a  vast arsenal of mass destruction was so unsettling and off-putting that the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services, Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss, who had successfully steered Hegseth through committee and to confirmation, rushed in to do damage control, suggesting Hegseth’s  hiccups were understandable “rookie mistakes” and no disrespect was intended.  I suspect those “rookie mistakes” hardly reassured senators who believed Hegseth who had told them only days earlier he was smart enough to know what he didn’t know and would reach out for expertise.  Maybe some were wondering why Hegseth, who can’t resist a TV camera or photo opportunity, was in the diplomatic lane reserved for the Secretary of State.

Last month the White House complained that several of their incredible nominee warriors had been wronged or looked down upon by educated  elites. I wondered if they had in mind their gay cabinet members. Surely not the bright U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent from rural Conway, South Carolina via Yale and Wall Street and the hedge fund billionaire world.

Not withstanding his pedigree and smarts and vast experience, Bessent abandoned his Horry County common sense in early February, and approved turning over some IRS sensitive secured data to Trump political appointees at Treasury who are acting without congressional authority as they masquerade as so-called efficiency and waste experts. The seasoned Treasury Secretary in an effort to silence critics claimed he personally limited access to “read only access” to the government payment system, but his access to young White House flunkies alarmed several former Treasury Secretaries.  Access is access, Mr. Secretary, and it can easily be manipulated and expanded in the wrong hands.  The Bessent decision resulted in several former Treasury Secretaries taking the unusual step of publicly expressing their concerns. It appears the Secretary never risked challenging the Musk/Trump DOGE authority to obtain such documents. Bessent is now part of the Musk/Trump shenanigans, and he will come to regret his swift compliance. Of course it’s not too late for Secretary Scott Bessent to acknowledge he made a huge mistake and become the first Trump cabinet member to resign in protest.  That course would require an extraordinary act of courage, and Bessent would pay a huge price for putting country above the Musk/Trump charade.

Fortunately this week the courageous Acting Secretary of the Social Security Administration, Michelle King, refused a similar demand from the Musk lieutenants for sensitive data from her agency. She is not an Ivy League billionaire and part-time Ivy League professor like the Treasury Secretary.  Commissioner King is, however, a cum laude graduate from Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, and when DOGE came after her she knew what was the lawful and right thing to do.  Her decision to stand up to the richest man in the world acting without legal authority cost her the job she loves.

What we are now seeing weekly is the 2025 Musk/Trump version of the Nixon Saturday Night massacre, and, unfortunately, this costly and well- orchestrated massacre is going to continue for weeks, if not months, with few Trump appointees having the courage to stand up and say no.

Let me state the obvious. Musk and his squad are making much of this stuff up as they storm into government agencies and systems.  This so-called government agency was never created, authorized, or funded by Congress. This faux DOGE concoction is a Musk/Trump White House invention designed to look and act like a federal agency created by Congress. It is no such thing. What is really going on is a bold illegal scheme operating in plain sight.  Naturalized citizen Musk and Trump and their DOGE lapdogs are seizing secured government documents without Congressional authority, oversight, accountability, and safeguards, and doing so for illegal political purposes as they seriously undermine the independence and legitimacy of a critically important revenue collecting government agency as well as a government agency that pays out earned benefits. This is just to emphasize two legitimate federal agencies already harmed by the DOGE boys. Mr. Musk, in cahoots with President Trump, is daring Congress, the courts, and the American people — look, folks, I’m smarter than all of you; by the time you catch up or figure our what we’re doing in our DOGE White House operation we will have rewritten the meaning of democracy in the United States, changed and updated the software and program language for our purposes, and achieved most of our objectives to gut federal agencies without interference from Congress and the courts. Agencies like USAID will be dead or forgotten.  Several federal agencies will only be shells by the time we curb and rewrite their programs and systems.  Understand we are agents acting for the President of the United States in his official capacity carrying out his official responsibilities, and all federal systems and employees fall under the sole jurisdiction and control of President Trump.

Whoa! Not so fast, Musk/Trump. Did Chief Justice Roberts and the majority in Trump v.United States and other cases dealing with presidential powers decide what you have been claiming  — unlimited and unchecked powers across the board for the President even if those acts are unlawful and beyond his official duties?  I think not, but let’s find out and soon.  Yes, the president is the Commander in Chief of our armed forces, and the SCOTUS gives great deference to recommendations coming from the pentagon, but the president is not the Commander in Chief of federal civilian employees nor does the President have total authority over all federal agencies.

What we are now seeing is the 2025 Musk/Trump version of the Nixon Saturday Night massacred, and, unfortunately, this costly and well-orchestrated massacre is going to continue for weeks, if not months, with few Trump appointees having the courage to stand up and say no. Nixon Dirty Tricks 1972 are back. Fifty three years ago that quaint young gang only manipulated primaries, our political system, and broke laws to achieve their political purposes. The initial dirty little tricks originated on the campaign trail and then some of the schemes became larger and were brought inside the Nixon White House at the highest levels and massaged by smart lawyers, but then a series of unexpected events happened and things spun out of control and over a couple of years nearly all the players, including the President of the United States, members of his cabinet, an Attorney General, a Commerce Secretary, the President’s Chiefs of Staff, and a cadre of younger bit players all went down in their lies, hubrus, petty ambitions, and illegal acts. Several went to jail for years, including two members of the Nixon cabinet. The disgraced outgoing President of the United States needed a pardon from the incoming President to stay out of jail.

What is happening today in the Trump/Musk White House and throughout this administration is a much more serious threat to our country than Watergate, but it will take time for the country to comprehend the scope of the power grab now unfolding, just as it did during Watergate.  But time is not on our country’s side today.  We must all get up and act smartly with a sense of urgency if we are to keep our democracy and country.  It will take we the people acting if we are to stop this outrageous threat from Musk and Trump. We cannot count on corporate CEOs and other so-called leaders who have already capitulated in public and kissed the ring, nor can we count on those Members of Congress in both parties who are failing to protect our country and government, but if we the people act by insisting that what is happening under Musk/Trump must stop, Congress will listen; and Congress will follow us. And courts will take notice too.

Aubrey Sarvis

Army veteran, retired lawyer, and former ED of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network