Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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And no Elon Musk did not do the Nazi sign
at the rally. He was throwing his heart out. He
put his hand on his heart and he like threw
his heart. He was thanking people. He did it several times.
It's not are we still doing this? Are we still
doing this? Like the okay symbol? Like when you do
an okay with your hands, like, oh, white power? Like
are we still doing this? Stupidity? Lefties? Come on, So
Donald Trump signs thirty three executive orders yesterday. There's plenty
of material for you guys to go after him over.
You don't have to do the Oh my gosh, that
hand signal is something I think it is, even though
it wasn't. You don't have to do that, Okay, you
could just like look at the substantive issues. Also, people
are very concerned that's a capital V and very in
a capital C, and concerned it's trademarked slogan. By the way.
People are very concerned that the guy who made a
whole TV series around firing people is let me see here, yeah,
firing people as president. Who could have seen that coming?
Donald Trump posted on his truth social platform. Our first
day in the White House is not over yet. My
Presidential Personnel Office is actively in the process of identifying
Andrew the headn'trite this, you know how I know he
didn't right this. The capitalizations are correct. There aren't like
randomly capitalized words in the middle of his post. Anyway.
He says they're removing over one thousand presidential appointees from
the previous administration who are not aligned with our vision
to make America great again. Let this serve as official
notice of dismissal for these four individuals, with many more
coming soon. And then he names four people, Jose Andres
from the President's Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, Mark
Milly from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, Brian Hook from
the Wilson Center for Scholars, and Keisha Lance Bottoms from
the President's Export Council. And then he says, in all caps,
you fired. That would be a good hook for a
TV show that where you fired a bunch of people
like that. That could work. Reid Is reports it thusly,
President Donald Trump said he plans to remove over a
thousand appointees from the administration of former President Joe Biden,
announcing four dismissals on social media, including the celebrity chef
Jose Andres and former top General Mark Millie. The step
is likely to reignite concerns that the President aims to
replace Biden appointees with individuals faithful to his agenda. No, well,
actually he says it right there in that post. He says,
he's removing these appointees who are not aligned with our vision. So,
I mean, I don't know why would It's not likely
to reignite concerns. You're already very concerned, So it's not
likely to do anything If you are already very concerned.
It shouldn't reignite anything. That fire is already burning, right Reuters.
I mean, he says it right there. That's the reason
they're not aligned with the vision, which, by the way,
I think the last time a president removed appointees from
the administration when they took over, you got to go
way back in the history books to Joe Biden four
years ago for the exact same reason. By the way,
exact same reason. I've got the receipts. We'll get to them.
The portrait of Millie, a former chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff who Trump has suggested should be executed
for holding back channel talks with China, was removed from
the Pentagon. Okay, I don't know if he said he
should be executed. I don't know. Maybe he did. It
would not surprise me if he did, let me be clear.
But I suspect he said something along the lines of
that's treasonous. He should be tried for treason, and the
punishment for that could be execution. So but I don't know.
I did not go deeper into the Reuters language there.
But the thing to keep in mind here, and we're
gonna come across it again in a bit is if
you only got your news from Reuters. Just kidding. Nobody
only gets their news from Routers. Well, Larry, let's just
say that you got your news from a news entity
that relied heavily on Reuters. Okay, And Reuters is like
the Associated Press or the AFP. It's this international news
gathering and dissemination platform, and a lot of news organizations
will pay to be a member, to subscribe basically, and
then you get all of the rights to publish their stories.
So if you were only consuming media and we're relying
on Reuters, you would not have the full context of
this story of what's going on. And we see it
again in another piece later on. I'll point it out
when we get there. So the portrait of Milli Mark
Milli was removed from the Pentagon shortly after Trump's inauguration
on Monday, And by the way, he swapped out the
portrait in the oval office of who is at Teddy Roosevelt.
I think that Biden had hung up there next to
the desk, next to the resolute desk, and that has
been re move now and replaced with another portrait of
Andrew Jackson, not the portrait of Andrew Jackson that Trump
had before, but now it's Andrew Jackson in retirement, so
it's an older He went with an older portrait of Jackson. Well,
because Trump's older too, you know, so I guess that
makes sense. There were a bunch of other oh. Trump
also ordered federal workers to return to the office five
days a week and weekend job protections for civil servants
on Monday, the first salvos in his campaign to gut
the federal bureaucracy aka the deep state or the ministerial class,
if you will. Trump's allies have said the return to
work mandate and the stripping of civil service protections widely
known as Schedule F, is intended to help the president
replace long serving government workers with loyalists. Note there is
an assumption built into that sentence that anybody who has
been a longtime government worker is not a loyalist to
the Democrat Party, is not a loyalist to any other president,
and of course that is not correct. There are people
in the bureaucracy. We heard about them the first time
Trump won when he beat Hillary Clinton, and we heard
this term being bandied about, the resistance, or as I
call it, the resistance. Well, it's a tribute to the
French and they're highly successful resistance. But the number of
people that work in government, Look, they're just like everybody else. Right,
people have their political opinions and beliefs and ideas and such.
And if you are in a position as these bureaucrats are,
to throw sand in the gears of what the incoming
administration wants to do, because you believe it's you know,
literally Hitler, because you've been reading a lot of Reuters,
I guess, and the Associated well and the New York
Times and the Well well okay, so mainly a lot
of the mainstream media. But if you've been reading that
stuff and this is what you believe, then why wouldn't
you try to stop Hitler? Right, everything's on the table,
if you're trying to stop the rise of Nazism and fascism,
I mean, aside from like the Hamas Hollies, aside from them, like,
that's a different kind. That's an okay, form of authoritarianism.
So so here is how the New York Times reported
this story. President elect Donald Trump. Oh, by the way,
this was last month. Okay. Trump has moved to install loyalists.
There's that word again. In jobs that Congress did not.
So a loyalist is what somebody that's loyal to Trump
or somebody that is of a like mind on what
Trump wants to do. They make no distinction here, because
how could they. They're talking in these sweeping generality assuming
that anybody who gets hired to go to work in
the government under a Trump administration must obviously be a
quote loyalist to Donald Trump the man, and not to
any idea of rooting out the deep state, quote unquote
the ministerial class, to rooting out the corruption. It is.
What it is is a form of shut up ry.
It is. You don't belong here. This is our realm.
We'll keep our hands on the levers of power. You
don't come here into our agency and start trying to
curtail the overreach that we have enjoyed for a very
long time. We've been working very hard to get into
all facets of the economy and people's lives. You don't
get to come in here and undo all of that
progress that we have been making. That's what this is.
This is an underlying assumption that a quote loyalist appointed
by Trump somehow or another doesn't belong in an agency
to do the thing that Donald Trump promised he would
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and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Charlie Savage writing
at The New York Times back in December about Trump's
moves to replace officials, and this was a great concern
to Democrats and media. But I repeat myself because you know,
traditionally you let these people serve out their whole term.
For example, the FBI director. Right, the FBI director gets
appointed to a ten year term, and Trump's like, no,
I'm gonna fire Christopher Ray. And in this New York
Times article, it said, under federal law, are supposed to
be treated like ordinary political appointees, whom incoming presidents immediately
replace with their own selections. As a matter of course,
while mister Trump has the legal power to do so,
so he is allowed to do this, he is violating
a norm of self restraint that past presidents, including himself,
adhered to. Except there there are like lots of examples
of people not doing this, including way back in the
historical annals, if you will, Joe Biden in his first year,
and just laid waste to all of these appointees under
Donald Trump. Oh and by the way, speaking of the FBI,
I see here at hot air dot com that Christopher
Ray made his intention known to publicly and publicly to
resign last month, and he apparently lined up his deputy director,
Paul A Body, to assume the role of acting director.
A body took over for a day, and now he resigned. Like,
what are you guys even doing over there? Did you
not talk to a body before you? Like, why would
you line up a guy to do one day? Just yeah,
they're yeah, they're draining themselves. The swamp is draining itself.
All right. I hope you had a happy holiday season,
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massages here on the Twitter from Eric? It's a Pete tweet?
He says, So, Pete, you mean to tell me that
it's gone from impossible to fire Democrat bureaucrats who are
actively impeding the President's reforms to nearly has gone from
impossible to fire them to nearly impossible to fire them.
These people would never last in the private sector, and
Eric then says that the norm is that Democrat appointees
get to serve forever, but Republican appointees can be fired immediately.
I can't believe you missed that in civics one oh two.
That's fair. That's fair, right, because it's different when Democrats
do it. See, it's different. Let me go over here
and get ed. Hello, ed, welcome to the program.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Yes, sir, you were talking about the FBI director resigning
and another one coming in for one day. Yeah, the
sole purpose, and that was just to fatten up that
individual's retirement plan. That probably added another fifteen hundred thousand
dollars a year to his pension.
Speaker 1: That could be the case. I've seen people raise this
as a potential explanation, but I don't know what the
rules are if you just get to be in there
for one day, or if there was a certain amount
of time you have to be in a post for
it to be uh. Because what you're talking about is
pension spiking. Is the is the term that they do
that that is used for this, and it's not just
at the FBI level, like it happens all across public sectors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, waiting and to say what happens to the
military now, anybody, uh, at that weight level and higher,
you can be sure there's gonna be a rush and
a rash of promotions in for the same reason.
Speaker 1: Just about yeah, yeah, maybe so maybe, so we'll wait
and see. I appreciate the call ed. Yeah, pension spiking
is it is a thing. It does occur very often.
People get promoted by, you know, a manager that likes them,
and they quote reward them, they give them a promotion.
But when it became so obvious that this pension spiking
was occurring, a lot of rules got put in place
at like state in law, local levels, So you have
to be in the position for a certain amount of time.
I don't know if that's the case for this gig,
but that could explain why, and that would be even
more egregious than just simply the clown show explanation. So
the leaders of the FBI as well as the IRS
serve a fixed term that does not align with changes
in administrations, both of the terms of the current people.
So you got Christopher Ray, the FBI director although now
he's gone, and the IRS Commissioner, Danny Werfel. They both
expire in twenty twenty seven. They just happen to line up.
The IRS guys got a five year term, the FBI
guys got a ten year term, and so they were
both set to see their terms expire in twenty seven.
The New York Times report says the practice by incoming
presidents of letting officials in positions with legally define terms
finish serving them out does not adhere to all positions
in the executive branch. Even though a federal law says
US attorneys are appointed to four year terms, it is
routine for all of them to offer their resignations when
new presidents take over, no matter how long they have served. Yeah, so,
isn't like that's an interesting thing. Remember George W. Bush
and he fired like thirteen. I think US attorneys an
outrage ensued. How dare he? These are public service? You know,
there's always this crying and gnashing of teeth when a
Republican does this, and when Democrats do it, it's, well,
you know, that's part of the gig. They all knew
what they were signing on for. But beyond that, The
New York Times reports it is difficult to identify any
clear modern precedent for Trump's actions, and then they go
on to list three actual incidents that are in fact
the same thing. We can't find any precedent, well except
these number. One January nineteen ninety three, officials in Clinton's
administration immediately started exploring what to do about the FBI
director William's Sessions, and Sessions refused to exign, resign, and
so Clinton removed him, cutting short his term by about
four years. Is that different? How is that different? That's
the same freaking thing. In January twenty twenty one, Biden's
incoming team ousted the General Counsel of the National Labor
Relations Board, Peter rob a Trump appointee whose term had
been set to last until that November they fired him.
Is that different? No, it's exact same thing. Also, same month,
same timeframe. Joe Biden, well his handlers sought to remove
Michael Pack, the Trump appointed chief of the US Agency
for Global Media that runs like Voice of America and
Radio Free Asia. So while the New York Time says
we can't find any precedent where this thing has happened,
they then list three things of the exact same kind.
But maybe it's because he's a Republican and that's why
there's no precedent. That's what Democrats did. Joe Biden just
did it. He just did this. And by the way,
the purges continued for months under Joe Biden. Months. All right,
if you're listening to this show, you know I try
to keep up with all sorts of current events, and
I know you do too. And you've probably heard me
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it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've
been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and
it's a website, and it combines news from around the
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as they make the media landscape more transparent. All right,
So back in September twenty twenty one, so this is
like eight months after Biden got into office and started cleaning,
how started firing people and such, he was still going.
In September twenty twenty one, President Biden fired all Military
Academy board members appointed by Trump, regardless of their qualifications,
in a purge, drawing stiff pushback because their terms were
supposed to be three years. Six presidential appointees on each
academy board, so eighteen people in total were told to resign.
They were given you know, six pm today or whatever.
And one one of the board members that I think
this complete purge shows that the administration is hell bent
on the woke mob controlling or having input into military education. Right.
So these are the boards that review, I guess, the
applications or help run the schools, you know, West Point
Annapolis or the Naval Academy. Right, this is why is
such a big deal. They said. Historically it has never
been done before, unprecedented is a word you could use here.
Some of the people let go include former National Security
Advisor hr McMaster, he was on I think, on the
West Point Board. Kelly and Conway was on the Air
Force Academy Board, White House. Former White House Press Secretary
Sean Spicer, who is a longtime Navy reserve officer on
the Naval Academy Board. Out also removed from the West
Point Board. Retired General Jack Keene, retired Army Army Colonel
Douglas McGregor, Afghanistan War veteran clinical psychologist Megan Mobbs, Bronze
Star recipient, businessman David Urban, retired Army Lieutenant General Guy
Swan over the Naval Board. Trump's White House Budget director
Russ Vote, Jonathan Hyler, who worked for former Vice President
Mike Pence, lawyer John Cole, whose wife is TV host
Greta Van Susterron Hyler said it's not clear what the
basis for this purge is. A plane reading of the
statute that created the board in eighteen seventy nine talk
about norms and all includes traditionally bipartisan appointments by congressional leaders,
and says the president's appointees served three year terms. The
service academy boards have always enjoyed a tradition of bipartisanship.
Former Naval officer Anthony Parker and retired Rear Admiral Joseph
Walsh also got the boot from the Naval Academy Board,
and the White House confirmed that. So don't tell me
that this is something unprecedented. It's not. I have been
paying attention. This has been happening more and more and more,
and really ramped up in the last four years. Back
in twenty twenty one, before that round of purges. But
after the first round of purges, the left was celebrating this.
Mark Joseph Stern, leftist who rights at slate dot Com,
said that, you know, Joe Biden fired Andrew sol from
the Social Security Administration. It marked the latest chapter in
Biden's ongoing efforts to expel Trump holdovers from leadership positions
in the executive branch. See here, it's totally fine, right,
And actually, you know who's really to blame here the Republicans.
Of course, Donald Trump is to blame under this theory
of unitary executive that's been gathering widespread support on the right,
scorn from the left. It's like you guys have been
saying that the executive office has these powers. Well, now
here you go. How do you like it? We're going
to use them. Right. But here's the thing, because Stern says,
if Trump had just put regular competent Republicans, which I
don't even know what that means to a leftist like
Stern in charge of the government, Biden might have put
up with them until their terms run out. But Trump
put arsonists in charge of the firehouse. How else do
you reduce the power of the ministerial class unless you
put people in there with a mission to dismantle it.
There isn't any other way to do it. This is
not some sort of a new philosophy that conservatives have
been espousing. It's kind of the hallmark limited government. All right,
that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much
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