Bob Kaldahl recalled how the fighter jets revved their engines to a high-pitched shriek before catapulting off the USS Shangri-La, producing vibrations so intense that he felt like he had “ants crawling around” in his ears.

Kaldahl performed his duties as a fire control technician without any assigned personal protective equipment and sustained permanent hearing loss while serving aboard the aircraft carrier in the 1950s.

The 93-year-old always bore his hardships proudly, never expecting to see the day when the government turned on patriots like him.

But that’s exactly what happened. Billionaire-run-amok Elon Musk declared war on America’s heroes, pushing to slash tens of thousands of crucial jobsat the Department of Veterans Affairs and imperiling programs keeping many alive.

Musk, an unelected and unaccountable appendage to the Trump administration, launched a scorched-earth campaign that continues to reduce huge swaths of the federal government to rubble. The VA is just one of Musk’s targets, and his attacks on the department come at a time when more and more veterans require care because of ailments contracted in Vietnam, Iraq, and other combat zones.

“He has no business being in there whatsoever,” Kaldahl said of Musk, who never donned a uniform but became the world’s richest person by leveraging the opportunities and freedoms afforded him by those who did.

“I served four years to protect our democracy, and then they let somebody like him come in and take over and do the things he’s done. It’s unconstitutional and unacceptable and disgusting,” added Kaldahl, a former member of the United Steelworkers (USW) who worked for

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