Charlie Savage
Appearances
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
One of the things that really struck me about the national conversation that's unfolding around this was an editorial in the Wall Street Journal whose editorial board is very conservative and business friendly and therefore traditionally you would expect to be a friendly place towards this notion of gutting regulatory agencies or bringing them to heel and unitary executive theory and all that.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
But even they were saying, you know, this is demonstrating a downside to that way of structuring government, which is the potential for corruption by centralizing too much authority in a way that becomes unaccountable. And, of course, overlaying this is just the role of Congress in general.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
It's one thing whether this is a better way or a worse way to do it, but completely cutting out the Article I branch of government in making decisions about how to structure things suggests – There's no role left for lawmakers in shaping the basic structure of our federal government.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
Charlie, last word to you. I do think you're onto something, and it makes me think as well about how he likes to invoke emergency power and declare there's an emergency, whether or not the facts on the ground might be realistically described that way. We have an emergency on the border, so I can spend all this money on a border wall that Congress didn't appropriate.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
Sort of like rhetorically creating the situation that then allows extraordinary action would be a theme that unites all of this.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
Well, I think part of it also is that the deal that it looks like he's going to make is going to be a very favorable to Russia deal. They're going to be allowed to keep the territory that they unlawfully seized from Ukraine. And Trump has already said that Ukraine won't be allowed to join NATO, which is another Putin demand.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
And so handing this entirely favorable settlement, if that's what happens, to Moscow looks pretty bad if Moscow was the aggressor and the villain in this story. Of course, in sort of Moscow propaganda land, it was the West's fault. It was provocation by Ukraine and NATO that necessitated this non-war military action.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
And Trump is just embracing that narrative with this remark, which many Republicans and conservatives find grotesque.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
That's right. And hovering over all this is the prospect of eventual NATO withdrawal, which Trump wanted to do in his first term and was talked out of several times.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
All the signs have been that he's interested in a retreat from Europe and withdrawal of the American security umbrella over Europe. Whether that manifests itself in actual withdrawal from NATO or just sort of a undermining of NATO and withdrawal of security commitments in a way that the organization ceases to have meaning is, I think, up for grabs. But that's the direction. Yeah.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
Well, this isn't just about public opinion. This is about the transformation of the Republican Party into an instrument of Trump's personal will, the driving out of people who were willing to stand up to him in his first term. There's no more Liz Cheney's. There's no more John McCain's. People like Marco Rubio were among the Russia hawks who are now just— Negotiating with Russia.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
Well, in a way that's very favorable. to Russia. And so the people who are openly saying this is grotesque are people who don't have political careers anymore. They're like former Vice President Mike Pence. And so I don't see the, I don't want to talk about it from Thune that you just mentioned as something unique to this issue. I see it as just the texture of the times we live in generally.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
Sure. So United States government is structured by acts of Congress that say we're going to have a defense department, we're going to have a justice department and so forth.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
And most of those chunks of government are overseen by people who are directly accountable to the president and supervised by the president and can be fired by the president if they act in a way that don't align with his policy directions. Right.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
But going back to the 1880s and then especially over the course of the 20th century coming out of the New Deal, Congress has also created a series of independent executive branch agencies that are technocratic and have specialized jobs to regulate parts of the economy and that are not directly controlled by the president.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
The president appoints their leaders, usually commissions of multiple board members, but they serve fixed terms and the president can't fire them if he doesn't like what they're doing unless they've committed some kind of personal misconduct under the laws set up by Congress. So this is what we're talking about.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, Security and Exchange Commission, National Labor Relations Board, agencies like this. They regulate the economy. They impose rules and regulations on aspects of businesses that very wealthy people sometimes do not like.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
So for a long time, the conservative legal movement has wanted to get rid of that structure of government because they believe that centralizing control over these agencies in the White House with a president they could help elect would be a way to deregulate, to get rid of these rules that cut into their profits.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
And so they have invented a theory that the Constitution should be reinterpreted as not allowing Congress to do this, that if there's anything in the executive branch that's exercising government authority, the president has to control that. And so these statutes that Congress has passed – setting up these independent agencies should be struck down as unconstitutional.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
And Trump has been trying to execute this vision that's been kind of building really since the Reagan administration of a new way of thinking about the Constitution that they are hoping the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court will endorse when the inevitable litigation reaches them.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Rewriting Histories
And so Trump has been, A, firing people in disregard of the statutes that say he can't summarily do that unless they've committed some kind of personal misconduct. And B, with this new executive order, he's imposing direct White House control over what these agencies do.