By Tom Busillo
A veteran who was denied a life-saving heart procedure due to DOGE-initiated VA cuts says it’s okay, “I’m owning the libs!”
Jeff Preeble has only a few days to live, but he plans to spend them like the true patriot he is — “owning the libs” by driving his Dodge Ram on the highway, proudly flying a Trump flag from the bed of his pickup, and giving the finger to motorist with “libertard” bumper stickers.
Preeble, a Trump voter from Altoona, PA, was denied a life-saving heart operation at his VA hospital, part of a system that has undergone massive cuts to staff and services due to the firing of tens of thousands of VA employees. He said he is proud to be blocked from receiving much-needed medical treatment by a system “run amuck.”
“We need to shrink the size of government,” he says between puffs from an oxygen mask. “And if I have to die to do it, then so be it.”
After a severe coughing fit due to fluid rapidly accumulating in his lungs from congestive heart failure — a fit that leaves him blue in the face — he barely manages to croak out, “I’m owning the libs!”
Preeble is among the first wave of Trump-voting veterans expected to die from service cutbacks due to ongoing Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) trimming. These so-called “Martyrs for Musk,” as the group was named in a recent American Enterprise Institute think piece, appear more than willing to stoically look death in the eye in the name of smaller government.
“Why should taxpayer dollars go to keeping me alive?” asked former Marine Sniper Connor Huntington, shortly before dying of a simple infection that would have been treated with readily available antibiotics in a non-VA hospital.
Preeble’s wife blames the Democrats for making veterans reliant on a system designed to keep them healthy and alive. “The whole thing is an insult when you really break it down.”
But not all vets are planning to go quietly into that good night.
“These folks are bonkers,” says former Navy F-18 pilot Kate Cunningham, who is patiently waiting for a lung transplant in a Philadelphia VA hospital. “Trump is letting an unelected official lacking Senate confirmation, who happens to be born in the land of Apartheid, sell out our veterans by gutting an already overwhelmed VA system. It’s a slap in the face and it’s a shame half of America has drunk the Kool-Aid and can’t see the writing on the wall.”
Meanwhile, In his last days, as his heart very preventably and slowly loses all function, Preeble is trying to organize a petition that would have members of the armed forces pay for their own meals, rather than have them served for free at the expense of taxpayers.
“I always felt like a freeloader,” said the Special Forces veteran, who spent most of both Gulf Wars operating deep behind enemy lines. “There’s no reason I couldn’t pack a lunch like my Daddy did.”
President Trump, on hearing of these deaths, plans to issue commemorative coins to the families of the deceased, giving them a 25% discount on the $99 medallions that promote needless death in the name of efficiency.
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