Lawyers with a wardrobe change slow Trump's roll (02-11-2025--Hour1)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepeekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:30] Today's phrase of the day is constitutional crisis. And by that, I mean litigation. Actually, it's very normal. This is what happens when there are disagreements in the government. There are disagreements in the society. This is the appropriate venue that one goes through in order to adjudicate the disagreement and to figure out what's correct and what's not correct.

[00:01:05] What's allowable, what's not allowable, what's in someone's authority and what's not. So it's not a constitutional crisis by any stretch.

[00:01:21] Okay, so it's not that thing. Okay, it's not a crisis. It's just litigation. You would think that the left and the media, but I repeat myself, would be well aware, seeing as how they basically were trailblazers with the lawfare tactic, right?

[00:01:41] And this is part of that tactic. And from what I can understand, these lawsuits are based on things that they think could happen. Oh my gosh, this might happen. That might happen.

[00:01:52] There are five, I think it's up to five now, lawsuits trying to slow Trump's role. And this is to be expected. It is quite the argument in my humble non-lawy opinion that their argument is that the head of the executive branch doesn't have the authority to administer the executive branch.

[00:02:22] I mean, it's a novel legal theory. So let's test it. And that's what the test is about. Right. And that does not make it the thing that I said earlier, the phrase of the day. It doesn't make it that.

[00:02:39] But I understand the left is very good at narrative crafting. And when they come up with these slogans, and then they, you know, send out the talking points, people begin using them. And then, of course, media just uses that as the narrative for all of their reporting on the matter.

[00:03:00] And that's why there is, and, you know, Rush used to do this all the time where he would have all of the sound bites from all these different media outlets using the exact same language, right? The first time I ever heard it was gravitas. Remember that one gravitas with George W. Bush in the 2000 election?

[00:03:23] And they kept saying that he lacked the gravitas. He lacked the gravitas to be the president. And it was just every single report, all of the Democrat politicians, everybody attacking him, everybody said the word. And that's not a coincidence. Literally not a coincidence. It is the talking point. So. Against this backdrop of the phrase of the day.

[00:03:52] It, by the way, it does not pay. This isn't a radio bid where the phrase that pays or something like that. I'm not doing, you know, you're not going to get money every time I say constitutional crisis. I feel like I've made a mistake here. Anyway. J.D. Vance went on to the Twitter machine. And.

[00:04:21] He tweeted out the following quote. If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges are not allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. This has got the left in a tizzy.

[00:04:50] J.D. Vance doesn't know the law. Actually, he does. He went to Yale Law and pretty smart guy. And he's actually correct on this, according to. Jed Rubenfeld, who happens to be a Yale University constitutional expert and law professor. He said J.D. is correct about this. And his examples are exactly right.

[00:05:17] Where the executive has soul and plenary power. Plenary means complete. Complete control. OK. So where the executive has soul and absolute power under the Constitution, as in commanding military operations or exercising prosecutorial discretion, judges cannot constitutionally interfere. They can't do it.

[00:05:47] So I just saw, by the way, let me take a quick beat here and just point out. I don't know what's going on with our phones. I suspect it is connected to the Wi-Fi issue. I'm assuming Internet something because I think they put us all over onto the VOI voiceover IP. And so I just saw somebody call in. They got put up on the on the call screen board and then they dropped off. And I knew that I know that was happening during Vince's show.

[00:06:16] So just a heads up there. Phone system, once again, kind of foobar here. Not sure what's going on. The Internet's affected as well. That's why, see, that's why I am old school. I print out all of my stories because if there is Internet failure, then whatever failure I have is is basically my fault. It's not the Internet. So actually, maybe I should go to paperless.

[00:06:45] Then I could blame the Internet if I ever run out of show material. I'm just kidding. I never run out of show material. So. Andy McCarthy over at National Review, former U.S. attorney, lawyer guy, right? He, too, says that J.D. Vance is correct about the limits of judicial restraints on executive power. And he cites. 2012. So this was 13 years ago. Some of you may be old enough to remember this.

[00:07:15] Remember this case, Arizona versus United States. And as soon as I start telling you what this case was about, you're going to remember what it's about. Right. Obama's president. Arizona sues the federal government. And the Supreme Court upheld one aspect out of four of Arizona's contested immigration statute.

[00:07:39] And this was a provision requiring state police in certain circumstances to verify a detained person's immigration status with the federal government. In other words, the 287 G program. The thing that our local sheriff here, Gary, not my fault, McFadden, promised to scrap once elected and then did so.

[00:08:05] And refuses to cooperate with ICE, even though he says, I cooperate with ICE. I cooperate with ICE. It's not my fault. This was a rejection of the Obama administration, which had argued that the provision was preempted by federal law and that its enforcement would interfere with Obama administration policies. So that was the one element that the Supreme Court found in favor of the state of Arizona. I think Jan Brewer was governor at the time.

[00:08:34] Hours after the Supreme Court ruled against President Obama on this point, though, the Obama administration announced that it would cease cooperation with Arizona's efforts to verify a detainee's immigration status. So they scrapped 287 G. Rather than allow Arizona to continue helping them, they were like, no, no, no, we're just going to scrap our participation with you.

[00:09:03] This after Obama lost in the Supreme Court, he decided he was going to ignore the Supreme Court because under the Constitution, it was his job, not the justice's job to decide immigration enforcement policy. See, so 13 years ago, you guys made this bed. And now you have to lie in it. I told you you were not going to like it when you have to live by the rules that you wanted. All right.

[00:09:32] 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 probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why? Well, because 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 world in one place. So you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check.ground.news slash Pete.

[00:10:00] I put the link in the podcast description, too. I started using Ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check.ground.news slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.

[00:10:29] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. All right. Let me pick back up the Andy McCarthy piece. So the tactics that we are seeing right now from the left with the lawfare is not new.

[00:10:48] The view that the executive branch, the president, can essentially ignore what the Supreme Court says is the law, this is something also that is not new or unusual from Democrat administrations. McCarthy points out how when FDR.

[00:11:12] Did not get his way on New Deal programs, he threatened to pack the court, which I know Democrats don't remember what that phrase means lately, but it means to add more seats to the U.S. Supreme Court. So you can then pack your people in there. You can appoint all of the inhabitants of the new seats.

[00:11:37] And the purpose there is to change the vote count at the end of whatever oral arguments and whatever decisions going to be made. If it goes from a nine person body to, you know, a 13 person body or a 15 person body, you will have appointed the majority or enough of a majority to those seats. And then you are directing the outcome through those appointments so you can get what you want.

[00:12:05] That's what's called packing the courts. It's not just filling vacancies that were preexisting. That's not packing the court. Democrats tried to make it that when they got mad that Trump filled a vacancy. That's not packing a court. Packing a court is what FDR tried to do and what Democrats have lobbied to do whenever there's a Republican that gets a chance to fill a vacancy. A preexisting seat vacancy.

[00:12:33] Anyway, so FDR, right, threatened to pack the court until the justices got their minds right and agreed with him and voted the way he wanted to vote. And that's what that was more than a ruling. When Biden didn't get his way on socializing student loan debt. He bragged to his progressive base that he was which he was desperately trying to turn out to vote for Democrats against Donald Trump.

[00:13:03] He said he didn't care what the justices said. He was going to keep figuring out ways to do what the court said was not legal. And he said he was going to keep doing it. Now, you may not remember that. That was a long time ago. Granted. During the Biden years, a number of red states sued to attempt to make Biden enforce immigration law. In part by reinstating the remain in Mexico policy.

[00:13:26] But a court has no power to force a foreign country to agree to do something, let alone to direct the president to negotiate such an agreement. Of course. You get the Marbury v. Madison. Observation from the chief justice, John Marshall, who famously said, quote, It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.

[00:13:53] But it is also just as true, says McCarthy, that the Constitution does not make the Supreme Court the general overseer of the government. In theory, the judiciary is the least powerful branch because it has only judgment, not the purse nor the sword. OK, executives got the sword and the legislative has the purse.

[00:14:17] And this is why when you hear the left talk about co-equal branches, that's not what that means. It doesn't mean everybody has the same equal power. The judiciary is the weakest of the three. It is also the branch given the least responsibility for the conduct of government because in a free, self-determining republic, most federal decisions are supposed to be made by politically accountable officials.

[00:14:41] In other words, members of Congress and the president who answer to the people whose lives are affected by the decisions. So while the court can and should say what it thinks the law is, you always have to remember that justices are, quote unquote, right because they are final, not final because they are always right. Keep that in mind.

[00:15:07] Justices are right because they are final, not final because they are always right. And this gets to stare decisis. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina, just a quick drive up the mountain? And Cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal or get family and friends together for a big old reunion.

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[00:16:23] Or check out all there is to offer at CabinsOfAsheville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. All right, so I'm quoting Andy McCarthy's piece at National Review. Justices are right because they are final, not final because they are always right. Because the high court has a history of reversing itself on some pretty important things, right? Because sometimes prior rulings were egregiously wrong.

[00:16:53] Dred Scott, for example, that's the most famous one, overturning Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision, right? The court has this doctrine called stare decisis, which I think is Spanish. And I'm just kidding, it's not Spanish. It involves respect for precedent, okay? So the thing that was decided before should probably stay in place.

[00:17:21] And this creates a consistency, a predictability in law, right? So everybody knows what the rules are and they're not changing willy-nilly every other year or something, right? You want to be able to have an expectation that the law is constant. So that's the stare decisis philosophy, this doctrine.

[00:17:47] And this is why Democrats always ask about it during confirmation hearings of particularly Republican appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court is because they always – it was their way of asking their opinion about Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, the abortion rulings. And they'd be like, what do you think about stare decisis? Do you commit to adhere to stare decisis? And what they're talking about or what they were talking about was abortion rulings, right?

[00:18:16] A major aspect of this assumes that some decisions are wrong and wrestles with whether they should be retained nonetheless. This is part of the problem with stare decisis is that if a Supreme Court gets it wrong, then the wrong ruling stays for a long period of time. That's the downside. As Thomas Sowell says, right, there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.

[00:18:39] And this is one of the tradeoffs with stare decisis is if you get a bad ruling, it could stay in effect for a long time, like Roe, like the Dred Scott decision. Thankfully, the default position of today's Supreme Court is to resist judicial intrusions into realms the Constitution consigns to other decision makers, says McCarthy.

[00:19:02] And this is very important, too, because if you have an activist court like we have had for decades, for basically my entire life with Democrat appointments making up the majority on the court, then they divine all sorts of things like the right to privacy in the Constitution somehow gives you the right to commit abortions.

[00:19:28] And it's very difficult to then overturn that because of stare decisis. But when you have a judicial philosophy of restraint like we see now, which is the Supreme Court saying that's not our job, that is the role of the executive and legislative branches or whatever,

[00:19:44] then it is less likely that the court wades into this stuff, which is why these lawsuits that have been brought on Trump's executive orders don't seem to have a lot of chance for success in the long term. If they go up to the Supreme Court, which they most assuredly are going to. And this is why there is a there is a thought out there that this is all by design, right?

[00:20:12] This is this is a you know, don't throw me in the briar patch strategy. That not only are you going after these waste, fraud and abuse examples in all of these different executive agencies, which, oh, by the way, have also been used as personal fiefdoms for leftists to draw paychecks and funnel money to their political pals.

[00:20:37] That not only do you have that, but you will also then get some rulings from the Supreme Court that say, no, you can't stop the president from reining in waste, fraud and abuse and rooting out this kind of corruption in the branch of government that he oversees or she. Overseas, regardless of what you think of the president's scruples, he says he is the president and he is constitutionally supreme in such areas as foreign policy.

[00:21:07] And this is very important on the USAID front, because that is all foreign spending, right? I mean, theoretically, that's that's where that money is supposed to be going. So that's clearly under the president's purview. A court has no business interfering with him based on fears that he might disrupt norms. Now, Andy McCarthy had a follow up piece.

[00:21:33] This one was titled The Courts Are Slowing Trump Down, Not Necessarily Stopping Him. He says there are some progressive judges who are philosophically sympathetic to claims that the president is interfering with the safe, professional operation of the administrative state. As if the chief executive has no say in how executive agencies conduct business. For the most part, though, what we're seeing are the normal effects of litigation, which slow down government action.

[00:22:02] This does not mean all or even most of Trump's directives will be stopped. OK. Again, this is all by design. I would say this for years, which is that I don't want government moving fast. A government that moves fast is an abusive, tyrannical government. That's not what it was supposed to do. The founders recognized this. They wanted all sorts of checks and balances.

[00:22:31] They wanted ways to put the brakes on fast moving legislation. That's why it's got to go through the House and the Senate and then get a signature from the president. Right. Gridlock is OK by me because it means government is not doing more stuff. And as one who doesn't want to see government doing a lot of stuff, gridlock is fine. This is not some sort of constitutional crisis.

[00:23:02] Going with the different. OK, so this is not that this is normal. This is a normal process. This is where you're supposed to fight these issues out. So I'm fine with the litigation. And I am comforted. By a belief that the U.S. Supreme Court is going to behave in the way that it has been heretofore. That's just my opinion. All right. I hope you had a happy holiday season.

[00:23:30] But tell me if something like this happened at your house. Your family and friends are gathered around. Maybe y'all are in the living room. You're laughing, swapping stories, reminiscing. And then somebody says, hey, dad, remember those old VHS tapes? Did you ever get them transferred? And then the room gets all quiet. All eyes are on dad who says, oh, you know, well, I've been meaning to. But I just haven't gotten around to it. Look, don't let those priceless memories sit in a box for another year. All right.

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[00:24:24] Trust the experts at Create a Video, conveniently located in Mint Hill, right off I-485, and online at createavideo.com. All right. Let's take a phone call and speak with Bo. Hello, Bo. Welcome to the show, Bo. Hey, how are you? Hey, I'm good. What's up? Hey, listen, I love your show. I really appreciate having you out there. A voice of rationality. Well, thanks. I appreciate it. And then I think that'll be one of your call signs. A voice of rationality. A voice of rationality.

[00:24:54] It's too close to that rationality conference or whatever, though, that I was talking about yesterday where that trans-vegan cult got all hooked up together. You're right about that. Yeah, I don't want to get smeared with that. Well, listen, I- Hey, watch out for that train, man. Watch out for that train. There he is. Hey, watch out for that. So, let me make my comment. I'll try to- It's a big bite of sandwich. Wait.

[00:25:23] Are you, like, right at- Hang on, Bo. Are you right at the railroad track? I am. You are. You're- I'm going by. What crossing are you at? I'm in Gastonia. At Hudson and York. Okay. All right. All right. So, listen, so this is a big bite of sandwich. I'll try to do it quick. That massive amount of waste and fraud that we have going on that just is, I mean, not small billions. It's many, many, many, many billions. Yep.

[00:25:49] If we look at a complicated problem, and it's a lot of complicated problems you can't just fix with money, but if we look at something as complicated as homelessness, and we'll hit California first. California has roughly 177,000 homeless people. Okay? I'll take your word for it. Yeah, I know it's a lot. I don't know the exact number. Yeah.

[00:26:14] Well, if they got 100,000 apiece in a combination of food and training and housing, et cetera, that's $17 billion. If they got 200,000, it's $34 billion. Let's give them $300,000. Now we're up to, I don't know, call it $50 billion. Okay? They have a train that they're supposed to, a high-speed train that was supposed to cost $28 billion.

[00:26:40] Their bill on that is now expected to be approximately $120 billion. They could cure their home, well, not cure it. I don't know if you can't cure it, but they could make a massive impact on homelessness in California for $30 billion. Yeah, they could literally build a skyscraper to house every homeless person. You could put them everywhere. In the United States, if you look at the same problem, we have roughly, we have under 800,000.

[00:27:10] It's supposed to be 775, I mean, 800 million. No, I'm sorry, 800,000. Yeah. 777,000 is what Google says currently. Homeless. And you look at the same numbers, if we gave them $80 billion, $80 billion, they get $100,000 apiece towards aid, education, new job skills, housing, et cetera. We give them $200,000, we've spent $160 billion.

[00:27:36] We've committed $220 billion to Ukraine and already given them $90. Why can't we take care of Americans for a change? Well, I mean, I think that's what Donald Trump and the Doge dudes are doing. And this is why there was an argument to be made here that these lawsuits are not trying to stop Donald Trump.

[00:28:04] They're trying to stop the people that voted for Trump, right? I mean, this is what people knew. He said he would do this and now he's doing it. And now you've got lawsuits to stop him from doing it. But so, I mean, in essence, it is Democrats working to thwart the will of the people. Right. And but you would think that every Democrat wants to stop homelessness, right? Eh, really? No, I actually don't. They want to line their pockets. Right.

[00:28:31] I mean, it's that you have a cottage industry, much like at the international level with the NGOs. You've got the same sort of dynamic going on at the local level, state levels, where you have all of these nonprofits that feast off of the taxpayer funded grants. And if you solve the problem, then they don't exist any longer. Yeah, I'm just absolutely ecstatic about rooting out all the thieves and thievery. Yeah. No, I am, too. Yeah, Bo, I appreciate the call, buddy. Watch out for the train. No, yeah, like that.

[00:29:00] That's when you look at the incentive structure, right, that is surrounding whether it's the local stuff or the USAID international stuff, right? They are behaving in a way that if you believe that their their mission is to help, then it doesn't make sense why they're stopping it. Because, again, I said this the other day when all of this fraud started coming out, we started seeing some of these programs and where the grants were going.

[00:29:28] And if you assume that they start the programs to address the thing that they say they want to address, you would think they would be the most angriest people at the waste and abuse and fraud because it is redirecting money away from the thing that they say they want to fix. But they're not. They're trying to protect the system as it is constructed.

[00:29:54] They don't want anybody coming in and fixing the waste, fraud and abuse. So go back and reassess your assumption. The assumption was that they wanted to fix this stuff. Perhaps they actually don't. And if you reassess the assumption and say maybe these programs are designed to personally enrich themselves and their allies, well, now their actions make a lot more sense. Of course they do.

[00:30:23] Of course they do. Kurt Schlichter, retired colonel. He writes at townhall.com. But he's also a trial lawyer in California. I think he's the only conservative lawyer left in that entire state. And he's advising people not to panic about, quote, all the stupid legal decisions from leftist judges that the left is getting from judge shopping in leftist jurisdictions. Okay. Do not panic about this.

[00:30:50] And he then goes through a series of explanations why this is all part of the plan. And he talks about it in a legal way. Like, from a legal strategy standpoint, there is a method to this. I'll explain in the next hour. All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast.

[00:31:18] So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecalendershow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening. And don't break anything while I'm gone.