It’s not easy to steal the spotlight from two seasoned publicity lovers like President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, but Musk’s 4-year-old son X AE A-Xii, or “X” for short, made it look easy during his Oval Office visit.

Now viral on the web, little X seemed to teach his dad a lesson I learned the hard way when I agreed to take my own son to my office on Take Your Child to Work Day. The most memorably lesson he seemed to pick up was that Dad’s job is pretty boring, especially for a 4-year-old.

Little X Musk offered his own version of that lesson in an executive order signing event Tuesday in the Oval Office with his dad, an adviser to the president as head of DOGE, the president’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” which is not a real federal department, since Trump apparently decided he could not spare the time to make it into one.

Although it is not easy to make out what the mics picked up of the young Musk’s voice in a video shared by media in the room, he seems to say “Shush your mouth” to the president as his daddy spoke — a sentiment I am certain was widely shared.

And it was not the only push-back that Trump and his team heard this week.

On Thursday, the interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, resigned rather than carry out an order from Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to dismiss the criminal indictments against New York Mayor Eric Adams.

Later in the day, five other top Justice Department officials resigned, including the head of the Public Integrity Section in Washington, which oversees corruption prosecutions, where Bove went next seeking a prosecutor to dismiss the case.

The drama carried over into Friday, according to Reuters, when Bove assembled the career integrity section lawyers and told them they had an hour for a volunteer to step forward. After weighing a mass resignation, a veteran prosecutor in the section stepped forward to do the dirty work.

For old Washington hands, it calls to mind President Richard Nixon’s infamous “Saturday Night Massacre,” when the desperate president ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was taking his job investigating the Watergate affair too seriously for Tricky Dick’s liking.

To his credit, Richardson resigned rather than carry out the order, as did his subordinate, William Ruckelshaus. Eventually, a man was found to do the deed, Solicitor General Robert Bork.

Richardson and Ruckelshaus, it should be noted, were Republicans. They were loyal to their party and to their president, but they were public servants of conscience. Their highest loyalty was to the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law.

In that regard, Sassoon is cut from the same cloth. Although Trump’s MAGA World has denounced her as though she were some sort of infiltrator left behind by the radical left, in fact her conservative credentials are impeccable.

As she pointed out in a letter remonstrating with Attorney General Pam Bondi, she is a Harvard College and Yale Law School graduate, a former clerk for the late conservative icon Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and a member of Federalist Society, the prestigious conservative legal group.

Explaining her resignation to Bondi, Sassoon called Bove’s order to dismiss the case “inconsistent with my ability and duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor and to advance good-faith arguments before the courts.”

“I have always considered it my obligation to pursue justice impartially, without favor to the wealthy or those who occupy important public office, or harsher treatment for the less powerful,” she continued. “I therefore deem it necessary to the faithful discharge of my duties to raise the concerns expressed in this letter with you and to request an opportunity to meet to discuss them further.”

That meeting apparently didn’t happen. Instead, the resignations did — and clouds of suspicion call for more investigation.

The resignations matter. They are a stunning repudiation of the administration’s attempt to force the dismissal of the charges against Adams — for reasons that hopefully will become clearer.

They are an encouraging sign that some political conservatives remain true to the standards we would like to see in the face of Trump’s countless other attempts to pollute the integrity of the criminal justice system with old-fashioned machine-style politics.

A cloud of suspicion is raised Sassoon’s charge that the mayor’s lawyers had “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed.”

In one eye-catching passage in her letter, Sassoon said that Bove had scolded a member of her team for taking notes during the meeting and ordered that the notes be collected at the meeting’s end.

What is being hidden? That’s a question that Americans have been asking themselves repeatedly as the unelected Musk has bragged of his DOGE teams rummaging through and slashing government departments without much accountability and highly questionable authority.

As that big argument rambles on, Sassoon and her fellow dissenters deserve our gratitude for reminding us that accountability matters, when others sound like little X, telling us to “Shush your mouth.”