Your monthly Social Security payment hasn’t arrived on time. You call Social Security’s 1-800 number, and a chatbot answers. The bot provides no helpful information. You repeatedly ask to be connected to an agent, until finally you are disconnected. You drive an hour to the nearest Social Security field office, where you’re told there are no walk-ins. The next available appointment is in two months — and your mortgage payment is due tomorrow.

This nightmare scenario could happen to you or someone you love. Why? Because President Trump and Elon Musk have sabotaged Social Security from within, gutting the infrastructure that has always ensured Americans get their hard earned benefits.

Ninety years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Social Security into law. It has since withstood wars, recessions and pandemics, but it has never faced a greater threat than Trump and Musk.

I don’t say that lightly. I have over 50 years of expertise on Social Security and have written multiple books on its history. My mentors, Robert Ball, Wilbur Cohen and Robert Myers, began working on Social Security in the 1930s. If they were alive to see the damage Trump is doing to the system, they would be horrified.

Social Security is too popular to destroy in the light of day. President George W. Bush tried to privatize Social Security, but he couldn’t convince even a Republican-controlled Congress to hold a vote.

Trump has apparently learned from Bush’s defeat. His strategy is to destroy Social Security quietly from within, while loudly claiming he will never cut it. He has decimated the Social Security Administration’s dedicated workforce. Musk’s........

© The Hill