Speaker 1: I realized that I might be one or two liberal
Speaker 1: slash media freakouts late to this, But I want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about Elon Musk, the role he's playing,
Speaker 1: and the sort of outrage over his position and stuff
Speaker 1: he's doing. It seems clear that the Democrats have just
Speaker 1: sort of settled on this as their big talking point.
Speaker 1: Fear mongering about Elon Musk, talking about how terrible Elon
Speaker 1: Musk is. That's the big talking point. And I feel
Speaker 1: like it is symptomatic of the rudderless state of the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party. They don't really have a true leader. They
Speaker 1: don't really have particularly smart or intelligent or outside the
Speaker 1: box messaging or thinking. All they have is sort of
Speaker 1: the blob of millennial political concerts who did a terrible
Speaker 1: job running the Biden and Harris campaigns, So they don't
Speaker 1: really know where to turn. The country has taken sort
Speaker 1: of this anti DEI turn, this anti trans ideology turn,
Speaker 1: and it seems like the Democrats are not catching up.
Speaker 1: Trump's approval numbers are actually pretty good. He's still sort
Speaker 1: of in the honeymoon phase of his early presidency, and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the things that they are
Speaker 1: most freaking out over early in the presidency the tariffs
Speaker 1: controversy with Mexico and Canada that I just don't think
Speaker 1: a lot of Trump voters really care that much about
Speaker 1: or are very worried about. They're like, Okay, let's just
Speaker 1: see where this goes. Tariffs are the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that Washington people get really upset about, and probably it's
Speaker 1: just not the kind of thing that I think phils
Speaker 1: down to your average Joe to really get his engine
Speaker 1: revved up about. So the fact that they were trying
Speaker 1: to make this big stick.
Speaker 2: How dare Trump attack our northern neighbors or Canada and
Speaker 2: Mexico with these tariffs, which clearly Trump was using them
Speaker 2: instrumentally at not as like actually wanting to use them.
Speaker 1: You wanted to squeeze various kinds of concessions out of
Speaker 1: Canada and Mexico for additional border security enhancements. He managed
Speaker 1: to get some concessions. How significant, I'm not sure, but
Speaker 1: he certainly got some concessions out of them for just
Speaker 1: a one month delay in applying those tariffs. Anyway they
Speaker 1: focused on, I think they focused on a lot of
Speaker 1: things that are not really gonna resonate very much with
Speaker 1: the electorate. As a whole, and I think Elon Musk
Speaker 1: is one of those things. I just don't think Elon
Speaker 1: Musk is that unpopular. He's disliked by Democrats right now,
Speaker 1: but I don't know how much independence and moderates dislike him.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people actually kind of think
Speaker 1: he's cool. You know, he's the CEO of the coolest car,
Speaker 1: the hottest car company in America. He does all kinds
Speaker 1: of weird stuff with space exploration. You know, he goes
Speaker 1: on the Joe Rogan podcasts and smokes dubes. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people think he's cool. I don't like
Speaker 1: the smoking dubes part, but I just don't the Democrats,
Speaker 1: I think, have this sense that this evil billionaire is
Speaker 1: taking over the government and doing these horrible things. Now,
Speaker 1: let me sort of explain, because I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people have this outrage of like Elon Musk has
Speaker 1: no authority to cancel spending, blah blah blah. All right,
Speaker 1: so let me kind of describe a literate little bit
Speaker 1: what I think is the sort of theoretical structure of
Speaker 1: what Musk is doing and et cetera. So Musk has
Speaker 1: clearly been basically what happened was There is this entity
Speaker 1: called the Executive Office of the President, the Executive Office
Speaker 1: of the President of the United States. This is a
Speaker 1: series of offices and agencies that support the work of
Speaker 1: the president within the executive branch. So these are people
Speaker 1: who directly assist and support the president's work as executive
Speaker 1: sort of advisors. It includes things like the White House Office,
Speaker 1: which is the staff who work directly with the president,
Speaker 1: including West Wing staff, the National Security Council, the Homeland
Speaker 1: Security Council, the Office of Management and Budget, the Council
Speaker 1: of Economic Advisors. Now, the head of the Executive Office
Speaker 1: of the President is the White House Chief of Staff
Speaker 1: in this case Susie Susie Biles or Susie Wiles. I
Speaker 1: can't remember her name, Susie Wiles. There we go. So
Speaker 1: this is Most of these positions are not treated as quote,
Speaker 1: officers of the United States. Most of the people who
Speaker 1: work in this are not officers of the United States,
Speaker 1: meaning they don't themselves enforce any kind of law. They're
Speaker 1: not tasked by the President with actually enforcing some aspect
Speaker 1: of the law. They are not, as a result, subject
Speaker 1: to confirmation by the Senate. There are a few exceptions
Speaker 1: to this, So I believe the head of the Office
Speaker 1: of Management and Budget is subject to confirmation by the
Speaker 1: Senate couple maybe like one or two other officials. Let's see, I've.
Speaker 2: Got a.
Speaker 1: Reading through this. Yeah, the Director of the Office of
Speaker 1: Management and Budget, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisors,
Speaker 1: and the US Trade Representative. They are the few exceptions
Speaker 1: to the rule that they are actually subject to Senate confirmation,
Speaker 1: but no one else is. One of the offices within
Speaker 1: the Executive Office of the President that was set up
Speaker 1: under Barack Obama was this thing called the United States
Speaker 1: Digital Service, and the idea of the United States Digital Service,
Speaker 1: I think it was set up by Obama to try
Speaker 1: to improve government websites and stuff like that. Trump basically
Speaker 1: took this and renamed it the Department of Government Efficiency.
Speaker 1: Now that has led to some angst because the word
Speaker 1: department has a certain meaning within the structure of the
Speaker 1: executive branch. A department is usually a larger and more
Speaker 1: significant division of the federal government created by congressional statute
Speaker 1: that has a Senate confirmed secretary who is a member
Speaker 1: of the President's cabinet. So the Department of Homeland Security,
Speaker 1: the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense.
Speaker 1: The Department of Government Efficiency that Elon Musk is running
Speaker 1: is not like that. It was really only named that
Speaker 1: as a joke acronym. This is Elon Musk's weird, kind
Speaker 1: of dumb sense of humor. The phrase doge was some
Speaker 1: kind of Internet slang joke that applied to certain kinds
Speaker 1: of funny pictures of a dog that would say funny
Speaker 1: things online. It got picked up by people sort of
Speaker 1: in the tech universe. Elon Musk, for some reason, thinks
Speaker 1: this is hilarious. He thought that it would therefore be
Speaker 1: funny if he could be within the government doing stuff
Speaker 1: to help promote governmental efficiency. So I think he honest
Speaker 1: to god, this is I think the reasoning behind this.
Speaker 1: He thought, wouldn't it be funny if we named it
Speaker 1: the Department of Government Efficiency and we called it doge
Speaker 1: and like, actually have some entity within the federal government
Speaker 1: named after this stupid online running gag joke of a
Speaker 1: dog saying funny stupid things. All right, that's genuinely what's
Speaker 1: going on. So the Department of Government Efficiency is not
Speaker 1: an actual department like the Department of Health and Human Services,
Speaker 1: The Department of State of Defense, the Department of Justice.
Speaker 1: It is basically an office within the executive branch to
Speaker 1: assist the president in doing his work. So that's an
Speaker 1: important thing to realize in all of this. Musk is
Speaker 1: in charge of this. This is an executive This is
Speaker 1: a presidential thing. This is within the executive office of
Speaker 1: the President, designed to help the president do his job.
Speaker 1: None of the people within the Executive Office of the President,
Speaker 1: other than maybe a couple of exceptions, like some of
Speaker 1: the Senate confirmed people, possibly none of those people within
Speaker 1: the Executive Office of the President are people who have
Speaker 1: the authority of themselves to issue rules or make cuts
Speaker 1: or things, or cut spending or anything like that. It
Speaker 1: seems what Musk's role in all of this is, if
Speaker 1: I'm understanding this correctly, I'm willing to be contradicted if
Speaker 1: this is any if anything more arise happening. But basically,
Speaker 1: what Musk is doing is this is a presidential advisor
Speaker 1: who is being empowered by the president to have access
Speaker 1: to different kinds of information about government spending. He's been
Speaker 1: given access to Treasury information, and the president is the
Speaker 1: head of the executive branch. He is able to give
Speaker 1: Musk that kind of clearance access whatever. There are some
Speaker 1: people getting upset. What business does Elon Musk have having
Speaker 1: access to Treasury information? Well, he is a presidential advisor.
Speaker 1: The president has the right to have access to anything
Speaker 1: that's going on at the Department of the Treasury. If
Speaker 1: the President wants to oversee things directly that's happening within
Speaker 1: the Department of the Treasury, and he wants to task
Speaker 1: an advisor, an Executive Office of the President advisor with
Speaker 1: reviewing it and overseeing it, he has the authority to
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 2: Elon Musk is getting access to individual taxpayers or social
Speaker 2: security numbers.
Speaker 1: Okay, some other executive branch official has access to all
Speaker 1: of our social security numbers who ultimately reports to the president.
Speaker 1: The president can access those things. The President can task
Speaker 1: Elon Musk and the other people that Musk has working
Speaker 1: for him within this little office within the Executive Office
Speaker 1: of the President. He can give them access to that
Speaker 1: stuff in a way that I think makes theoretical con
Speaker 1: law sense constitutional law sense. Furthermore, I don't think Musk
Speaker 1: is single handedly able to affect any changes on his own.
Speaker 1: All he can do is identify things and propose things
Speaker 1: so that the president or the reve relevant head of
Speaker 1: the relevant executive agency can authorize whatever freeze in spending
Speaker 1: or cuts or laying off of staff happens. So, for example,
Speaker 1: it appears that most of the people who work for
Speaker 1: the United States Administration for International Development USAID, it looks
Speaker 1: like most of those staff are being laid off. Elon
Speaker 1: Musk doesn't have authority to do it. But if Elon
Speaker 1: Musk is saying, hey, we're seeing that USAID is just
Speaker 1: a complete dumpster fire. So much of what's happening there
Speaker 1: is wasteful, useless, advancing left wing causes, like we need
Speaker 1: to just bring a halt to this entire operation and
Speaker 1: just start over from scratch. He can propose that, but
Speaker 1: I believe USAYED is under the State Department, Marco Rubio
Speaker 1: or whoever the relevant official there is would make that order,
Speaker 1: or the President himself. So all of this is tied up. Now,
Speaker 1: all of this is being framed by the Democrats as
Speaker 1: an unelected billionaire Elon Musk is just doing what he wants.
Speaker 1: Let's address this. There are only two people in the
Speaker 1: executive branch who are actually elected, Donald Trump and JD. Vance.
Speaker 1: That's it. Nobody else in the executive branch is elect
Speaker 1: did The idea is that the president enforces the law,
Speaker 1: and anyone else who's enforcing the law is there at
Speaker 1: his pleasure, and the president is the lynchpin of accountability
Speaker 1: for all those executive branch officials. Let's take Marco Rubio
Speaker 1: as an example. You know what, Actually, I'm gonna save
Speaker 1: this for the next segment because I want to go
Speaker 1: into this. But this idea of Elon Musk is an unelected,
Speaker 1: unaccountable lunatic. No, he's not unaccountable. The accountability is there
Speaker 1: in the person of Donald Trump. And I'll explain that
Speaker 1: when we return. This is the John Jrardy Show on
Speaker 1: Power Talk. Elon Musk is an unelected, unaccountable billionaires running
Speaker 1: a rough shot over the federal government to Oh, it's
Speaker 1: terrible what he's doing, cutting all these programs. It's terrible.
Speaker 1: It's terrible. Is he unelected? Is he unaccountable? Musk's position
Speaker 1: is as an advisor working within the Executive Office of
Speaker 1: the President. As such, his only role is advising the President,
Speaker 1: and in so far as the president wants him to
Speaker 1: advising other executive branch departments, the president can grant him
Speaker 1: access to the stuff the president wants to grant him
Speaker 1: access to. If there are cuts in funding that the
Speaker 1: president has the authority to make, or layoffs that the
Speaker 1: president or some other executive branch official has authority to make.
Speaker 1: Musk can recommend them, and the President can affect them,
Speaker 1: effect them, make them be. But is he unaccountable? Is
Speaker 1: he unelected? All right, let's remember this is the point
Speaker 1: I made at the n last segment. Literally, there are
Speaker 1: only two people in the executive branch who are elected,
Speaker 1: the President and the vice president. That's it. Nobody else
Speaker 1: in the executive branch is elected. Everyone else in the
Speaker 1: executive branch is appointed by either the president or hired
Speaker 1: by the president, or hired by someone who's hired by
Speaker 1: someone who's sired by someone who's sired by someone who's
Speaker 1: hired by the president. Nobody in the executive branch is elected. Okay,
Speaker 1: but when you elect a president you get a decent
Speaker 1: sense of all, right, well, he's going to appoint people
Speaker 1: who are like him, So no one's yelling and screaming
Speaker 1: at Marco Rubio become the secretary becoming the Secretary of State.
Speaker 1: Everyone kind of figured someone like Marco Rubio maybe even
Speaker 1: Marco Rubio himself might very well be nominated to be
Speaker 1: the Secretary of State. We all knew what the deal
Speaker 1: was electing Trump. He would elect someone with more Republican
Speaker 1: leaning foreign policy. He picks Marco Rubio. Not not a
Speaker 1: crazy thing. No one's looking at Marco Rubio as an
Speaker 1: illegitimate secretary of State. What I'd say, let me posit this.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk was far more obviously going to be part
Speaker 1: of the deal with Trump than Marco Rubio was. I mean,
Speaker 1: we weren't exactly sure whom Trump was going to appoint
Speaker 1: a secretary of State when he was elected. We only
Speaker 1: learned it was Rubio at some point after the election.
Speaker 1: Probably people were guessing that Rubio would have been one
Speaker 1: of the candidates, but it wasn't. Really, It was not
Speaker 1: confirmed before the election that that's what Trump would do.
Speaker 1: Everyone knew Elon Musk was going to have a role
Speaker 1: in the Trump administration starting in August of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: August of twenty twenty four was the first time that
Speaker 1: Trump came out during a rally and said, if I'm elected,
Speaker 1: I'm going to create this thing called the Department of
Speaker 1: Government Efficiency and Elon Musk is going to be in
Speaker 1: charge of it, and Elon Musk is going to try
Speaker 1: to work for us to identify for all waste, et
Speaker 1: cetera within federal spending. And everyone at the Trump rallies
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. Sounds good. Everyone knew no executive branch official,
Speaker 1: again other than the president is elected. But insofar as
Speaker 1: like who's going to be part of the package of
Speaker 1: electing Trump, everyone knew that Elon Musk was part of
Speaker 1: the deal. And Trump won pretty handily, kicked Kamala Harris's butt.
Speaker 1: He's elected president with everyone knowing. Everyone's clear that he's
Speaker 1: gonna pick Elon Musk to run this government efficiency business.
Speaker 1: You know, he wins the popular vote running on that basis.
Speaker 1: So the idea this unaccounted and let me I'll address
Speaker 1: this the unaccountability side. Elon Musk is not accountable, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is. Every executive branch official has accountability. You know
Speaker 1: what that accountability is. It's the fact that they are
Speaker 1: serving at the pleasure of the president. The president has
Speaker 1: to be politically accountable. President Trump knows that if any
Speaker 1: of his executive branch officials perform badly are involved in scandal,
Speaker 1: do things that are unpopular. Ultimately it redounds to him.
Speaker 1: Ultimately it's gonna harm him his political standing, his ability
Speaker 1: to get his agenda done, his and his party's ability
Speaker 1: to win the twenty twenty six midterm elections, his or
Speaker 1: his parties, or his vice president's ability to win the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight presidential election. There is political accountability that's
Speaker 1: at play for every single employee within the executive branch,
Speaker 1: in the person and of their boss, who hired them,
Speaker 1: who appointed them, and who lets them serve it as pleasure.
Speaker 1: I mean, Trump could snap his fingers and tomorrow Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: his whole Department of Government efficiency thing could be gone.
Speaker 1: Elon could be kicked out. He can snap his fingers
Speaker 1: and literally do that tomorrow. So this idea of like
Speaker 1: this whole conception that Elon Musk is this unaccountable, out
Speaker 1: of control billionaire slashing fund. What authority does he have, Well,
Speaker 1: he clearly he has the president's authority. That's what he has.
Speaker 1: He wasn't unelected in the sense I mean everyone again again,
Speaker 1: it was very clear to everybody when Trump was running
Speaker 1: that Elon was going to be part of the deal,
Speaker 1: and that Elon was going to try to slash spending,
Speaker 1: that Elon was going to try to identify wasteful government
Speaker 1: employees who weren't doing anything to fire them like that
Speaker 1: was all understood and Trump won on that basis, which
Speaker 1: is why I kind of find it baffling that Democrats
Speaker 1: think this is going to be like a really reliable
Speaker 1: talking point. Now, Am I going to agree with that
Speaker 1: every single thing Elon Musk does. No, But I just
Speaker 1: don't find there to be anything actually incorrect or wrong
Speaker 1: theoretically structurally, as far as I can tell from a
Speaker 1: constitutional law perspective, the theoretical structure of how the executive
Speaker 1: branch is supposed to work. I really just don't understand
Speaker 1: the kind of Democrat horror. I mean, I understand the
Speaker 1: Democrat horror he is knocking over these sacred cows that
Speaker 1: Democrats have preserved, these babies that they have for influencing
Speaker 1: the culture in all these left wing weights. I mean,
Speaker 1: the freak out over USAID is is really, I think
Speaker 1: disproportionate to the amount of actual impact that it has.
Speaker 1: I mean, it gives some foreignade to some countries of
Speaker 1: dubious value in many many cases, but that was clearly
Speaker 1: their baby and the fact that he's touching that. It
Speaker 1: just has absolutely driven them completely insane. All Right, when
Speaker 1: we return, the president is starting to face some legal
Speaker 1: challenges to his and Musk's desires to fire and lay
Speaker 1: off people. Why that should not be That is next
Speaker 1: on the John Gerardi Show. A few days ago, a
Speaker 1: large number of federal executive branch employees received an email
Speaker 1: that very similar that was clearly influenced by Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: and it was very similarly patterned off of an email
Speaker 1: that Musk sent to all of the employees at Twitter
Speaker 1: shortly after he took over ownership of Twitter. It used
Speaker 1: the phrase fork in the road, and it basically said, Hey,
Speaker 1: there's going to be a lot of changes that are
Speaker 1: happening with your employment as an executive branch employee, as
Speaker 1: a federal government employee. This is a fork in the road.
Speaker 1: If you want to resign, click the resign button or
Speaker 1: say you want to resign, and you will give you
Speaker 1: a severance package. Blah blah blah blah blah, no hard feelings.
Speaker 1: If you want to stay, indicate that you want to stay.
Speaker 1: And there's now a federal lawsuit that's being brought against
Speaker 1: the federal government by the labor union that represents a
Speaker 1: lot of these federal employees, saying that such an action
Speaker 1: violates federal law protections for workers' rights within for federal
Speaker 1: workers who work within the federal executive branch. And I
Speaker 1: think this is going to start raising a really really
Speaker 1: significant point of constitutional law, some stuff with constitutional law
Speaker 1: that I think our country has gotten wrong since since
Speaker 1: the FDR era Supreme Court. And basically it's this idea
Speaker 1: that the president is in charge of the executive branch,
Speaker 1: but for some reason can't fire everyone he wants within
Speaker 1: the executive branch. He doesn't actually have the ability to
Speaker 1: control its personnel completely. So let's get into that when
Speaker 1: let's look at a football team. Right. When a football team,
Speaker 1: let's say, let's take the football team that's lost its
Speaker 1: head coach and is hiring a new head coach. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: let's take the Washington Commanders, all right. Ron Rivera was
Speaker 1: the head coach of the Commanders. He gets fired. They
Speaker 1: bring in Dan Quinn, who's the new coach of the Commanders.
Speaker 1: Dan Quinn doesn't keep all of Ron Rivera's people. He
Speaker 1: doesn't keep his offensive coordinator and his defensive coordinator and
Speaker 1: his linebacker's coach, and his quartersback coach, and his strength
Speaker 1: and conditioning coach, and this guy and this No, a
Speaker 1: new administration comes in and you can't effectively be the
Speaker 1: head coach without having control over the personnel. Having control
Speaker 1: over the coaching personnel is essential. Like it would be
Speaker 1: a really bizarre situation. How can I really effectively be
Speaker 1: a head coach if I'm brought in to be the
Speaker 1: head coach but I'm told no, no, no, you have to
Speaker 1: if the owner owner tells the guy, no, no no, you
Speaker 1: have to keep all the same offensive defensive staff from
Speaker 1: the prior administration. The Cowboys tried to do this recently.
Speaker 1: They had when they brought in Mike McCarthy. They told him, well,
Speaker 1: you can't fire our old offensive coordinator because Jerry Jones,
Speaker 1: the owner likes him. And that didn't last long. Basically,
Speaker 1: that offensive coordinator ultimately wound up leaving Mike McCarthy wound
Speaker 1: up kind of taking control over calling offensive plays. But
Speaker 1: when you bring in a new if someone's gonna be
Speaker 1: in charge, they need to have control over personnel. Personnel
Speaker 1: is policy. You can't expect a bunch of people who
Speaker 1: fundamentally disagree with the policy you're trying to implement, to
Speaker 1: stay there and keep working for you and be effective.
Speaker 1: And we've just sort of accepted this, like it's just
Speaker 1: like an expectation. Like the media is like outraged at
Speaker 1: the idea of Hey, the career A ton of the
Speaker 1: career employees of the federal government are very liberal, and
Speaker 1: many of them stemied the work of Trump forty five.
Speaker 1: And the press treats this as like, no, that was
Speaker 1: a good thing. The idea that the president would want
Speaker 1: the executive branch to be filled with people who will
Speaker 1: actually actively support his agenda and not slow roll his agenda.
Speaker 1: It is seen by the left like there have been
Speaker 1: wild stories about how Trump, by wanting to fire all
Speaker 1: these executive officials is threatening the separation of powers. That
Speaker 1: wasn't an actual story from the New York Times trying
Speaker 1: to make that claim. No, that has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with separation of powers. Separation of powers means that Congress
Speaker 1: does its thing and the president does its thing. It
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with the president within the executive
Speaker 1: branch of government picking his people. Because let's remember what
Speaker 1: Article two says, the executive authority of the United States
Speaker 1: of the federal government the authority to enforce the law
Speaker 1: is vested in Article two of the Constitution in the president.
Speaker 1: That's it. He's the only one. Everyone else involved in
Speaker 1: enforcing the law. And I'm not just talking criminal law.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about criminal law, environmental law, all of the
Speaker 1: enforcing tax law, enforcing this kind of loan for this
Speaker 1: kind of regulatory law, this is kind of healthcare law.
Speaker 1: This is the whole panoply of the alphabet soup of
Speaker 1: the various executive agencies that are all tasked with enforcing
Speaker 1: some provision of law. The FDA, which is charged with
Speaker 1: enforcing federal law relating to the regulation of food and drugs.
Speaker 1: That's an executive branch role. The head of the FDA
Speaker 1: is all timately answerable to the president. Now, the problem is,
Speaker 1: this is what happens administration to administration. A Republican administration
Speaker 1: comes in. There are certain kinds of positions within the
Speaker 1: executive branch that are deemed political appointees, and then there
Speaker 1: are others that are called career employees. The career employees
Speaker 1: all stay, a lot of them are represented by a union.
Speaker 1: So the president appoints all the top people, all the
Speaker 1: political appointees, but they still have to work and do
Speaker 1: the work of this agency with all the career employees.
Speaker 1: The career employees are all Liberals, or at the very
Speaker 1: least the overwhelming majority of them are. They're unionized, they
Speaker 1: have various kinds of employment protections to prevent them from
Speaker 1: getting fired, and they basically have. They did feel in
Speaker 1: Trump forty five. They felt in the Bush administration that
Speaker 1: they can just sort of not enforce that not do
Speaker 1: their jobs more or less slow roll things. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: had these career officials who worked in actually writing, like
Speaker 1: drafting regulations, who threw some poison pill in that stymy's
Speaker 1: the whole effectiveness of the regulation. A ton of these
Speaker 1: people just flat out don't like Republicans. I mean, like
Speaker 1: people were crying and moaning about, Oh, these people at
Speaker 1: the FBI are being fired. Yeah, because the last time
Speaker 1: Trump won, a bunch of top level people at the
Speaker 1: FBI all tried to get him removed from office. They
Speaker 1: tried to they tried and succeeded in spying on him.
Speaker 1: Some of these top level FBI people were literally texting
Speaker 1: each other about how they're going to try to topple
Speaker 1: the President of the United States. Are you kidding? Me.
Speaker 1: Of course, Trump wants to clean house at the FBI. Now,
Speaker 1: back during the New Deal era, you had FDR in
Speaker 1: the thirties feuding with the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court
Speaker 1: was full of a bunch of old Republican appointees. FDR
Speaker 1: was this cutting edge Democrat proposing the New Deal, and
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court kept blocking blocking a lot of his
Speaker 1: New Deal ideas. This came to a head after the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six presidential elections, where not only did Roosevelt
Speaker 1: win re election, but the Democrats won enormous majorities in
Speaker 1: both Houses of Congress, and Roosevelt introduced this threat to
Speaker 1: pack the Supreme Court, to increase the number of justices
Speaker 1: on the Supreme Court, clearly in order to get the
Speaker 1: ideological outcomes that he wanted. Starting in nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, after that threat, the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: started ruling in his favor, and ultimately Roosevelt served in
Speaker 1: office for so long he was able to appoint. Most
Speaker 1: of the justices who were on the Court eventually died
Speaker 1: or left the Court. I died or resigned, and Roosevelt
Speaker 1: was able to replace most of them, and he got
Speaker 1: the kind of court that he wanted ultimately, But during
Speaker 1: the thirties, the Supreme Court was feuding with Roosevelt, and
Speaker 1: there was this case in nineteen thirty five called Humphrey's
Speaker 1: Executor versus United States. This had to do with the
Speaker 1: Federal Trade Commission commissioner, whom Roosevelt tried to remove, and
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court sided with Humphrey, although actually Humphrey died
Speaker 1: before the lawsuit was resolved. That's why it's called Humphrey's Executor,
Speaker 1: because Humphrey himself died. Basically, it said no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: This Federal Trade Commission is an independent commission. Even though
Speaker 1: it's exercising executive functions, it isn't really totally answerable to
Speaker 1: the United States the President, to the US government under
Speaker 1: the president, the president can't just fired someone wrongfully. The
Speaker 1: Court pointed out that, well, the Federal Trade Commission, it
Speaker 1: has it. Yeah, obviously it does some executive things, but
Speaker 1: but it also has kind of some some legislative roles
Speaker 1: to it because it's like making rules and kind of
Speaker 1: some judicial functions because it's hearing like appeals and resolving disputes.
Speaker 1: So so it's not totally under the executive brand. So
Speaker 1: the president can't just fire it. And this is sort
Speaker 1: of I think there's also some real separation and powers
Speaker 1: problems here that that okay, Well, is this an executive
Speaker 1: what is this an executive agency, a legislative agency, judicial agency?
Speaker 1: Who is it under? Who actually controls it? Is it
Speaker 1: just as free floating thing? I mean, we have controls
Speaker 1: for all these other branches of government. The judiciary gets
Speaker 1: appointed by the president. It can be they serve for life,
Speaker 1: but they can be impeached and removed by Congress. Congress
Speaker 1: is picked by the people. The president is picked by
Speaker 1: the people. What is this FTC commission?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: Now, pretty much all the conservative justices, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of conservative Supreme Court justices have looked back on
Speaker 1: Humphrey's executor as a stupid decision. If the president is
Speaker 1: the executive and executive branch officials wield his power, he
Speaker 1: needs to be able to direct it. How can it
Speaker 1: make sense that there can be employees who just want
Speaker 1: to style me the president, but they can only be
Speaker 1: fired for cause. No, that that makes no sense. So
Speaker 1: as long as you're working, as long as you don't
Speaker 1: I don't know, look watch porn on your government computer.
Speaker 1: You get to stay on the job, and you can't
Speaker 1: get fired even though you're actively even though you're not
Speaker 1: someone who supports the president's agenda, you're gonna not do
Speaker 1: a good job of enforcing his agenda. Really, we have
Speaker 1: to have a four cause like firing wrongful termination dispute
Speaker 1: every time no personnel is policy. The president should have
Speaker 1: complete authority over every position within the executive branch to
Speaker 1: hire and fire as he will. Now, this has been
Speaker 1: raised with regards to these kinds of issues have been
Speaker 1: raised with President Trump removing the Inspectors General, where there's
Speaker 1: this congressional statute that was passed to create the offices
Speaker 1: of the various inspectors General, people who would oversee the
Speaker 1: various departments of the federal govern to inspect them, to
Speaker 1: oversee them. It was created sort of in the post
Speaker 1: Watergate era where Congress felt like it had the most
Speaker 1: power and the presidency felt like it had the least
Speaker 1: amount of power. And basically it said, now the president
Speaker 1: can't fire them, he has to give Congress thirty days
Speaker 1: notice first. And President Trump is saying, no, I don't
Speaker 1: have to give you thirty days notice. That's an unconstitutional
Speaker 1: limitation on my power as the executive So I think
Speaker 1: we need to the Trump. This Trump administration may resolve
Speaker 1: the question of should Republican presidents just accept this status
Speaker 1: quo of no, we just accept that most of the
Speaker 1: employees of the federal government are liberals and they're there
Speaker 1: to kind of stemy Republican presidents whenever they get elected. No,
Speaker 1: it shouldn't be that way. And if there's one legal
Speaker 1: development that I think could be good, it would be
Speaker 1: Trump basically breaking the back of this blob of federal
Speaker 1: government employees who just stymy every Republican president. They get
Speaker 1: a chance to stemy when we return Trump wanting to
Speaker 1: turn Gaza into Atlantic City. Next on the John Girardi Show,
Speaker 1: President Trump. The other day of Benjamin Netting, Yahoo was
Speaker 1: in Washington. Trump announces at this big press conference that
Speaker 1: the United States is going to take over the Gaza Strip.
Speaker 1: They're going to move all the people out to Jordan
Speaker 1: or Egypt or something. They're going to rebuild the whole thing. Now,
Speaker 1: this is kind of crazy. I will admit. There are
Speaker 1: no actual good solutions to the problem of what do
Speaker 1: you do with Gaza. You either just pull out and
Speaker 1: leave Hamas there to keep being horrible psycho terrorists. Israel
Speaker 1: has a permanent military occupation which will be terrible. Or
Speaker 1: you do something crazy like this, I will say, I
Speaker 1: don't want one American soldier to be at risk to
Speaker 1: do this. I don't want my brother to die in
Speaker 1: the cause of turning Gaza into Atlantic City, whatever that is.
Speaker 1: But I'm wondering if this is round one of crazy
Speaker 1: negotiation stage that maybe results in something more reasonable happening.
Speaker 1: So we will see. That'll do it. John Girardi Show,
Speaker 1: See you next time on Power Talk