DOGE Isn’t a Constitutional Crisis. It’s Trying To Fix One.

0:00 this is one of the reasons why I don't think we hate the corporate press enough hey there friends fans and foes of dad Saves America John paa here and like you I am trying to keep up with the insane flurry of activity happening in our government with President Trump and Elon Musk and the flurry of executive orders and the incredible Revelations of the department of government

0:31 accountability or Doge and so I thought I would take this time to dive in and try my best to understand where the critics of President Trump may have a legitimate Point versus maybe blowing smoke and selectively applying outrage that really we could have used for the past four years and Beyond but let's start with one of the stranger Oval Office press conference moments um in modern memory shall we we're going to be

1:01 signing a very important uh deal today it's Doge and I'm going to ask Elon to tell you a little bit about it and some of the things that we found which are shocking uh billions and billions of dollars in waste Fraud and Abuse and uh I think it's very important and that's one of the reasons I got elected I said we're going to do that nobody had any idea it was that bad that sick and that

1:26 corrupt and it seems hard to believe that judges want to try and stop us from looking for corruption especially when we found hundreds of millions of dollars worth much more than that in just a short period of time and we want to weed out the corruption El go ahead uh sure so the uh at at a high level if you say what is the goal of do or or and and I think a significant part of this

1:53 presidency is to restore uh democracy this may seem seem like well aren't we in a democracy see well if you don't have a feedback loop okay we' have to if if you all right tell you gravatas can be difficult sometimes so one thing that I want to point out before we keep going because the rest of the clip is is is good and worth hearing but number one if president Trump is the next Hitler it's pretty weird to have a hitler-like

2:23 character sit and let this take place and hand the mic to anyone else to take the center stage that from a you know authoritarian strongman personalities profiling I would not say that this is exactly what you would expect to see that's number one number two uh it is weird and maybe Little X or however his name is spelled you know should be with a babysitter off camera for the uh for this impromptu press conference but this is Dad Saves America

2:54 after all and I happen to think personally that this is great this is the kind of Zoom call where your kids sort of bomb on the conference call at a grand national scale well it's encouraging all of us to have our kids be part of our lives and I like that I think that's great elon's interesting configuration of family uh notwithstanding if there's not a good feedback loop from the people to to the government and if if you have rule of

3:24 the the bureaucrat if the bureaucracy is in charge and then then what meaning does democracy actually have if the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the in the form of the president and and the Senate and the house then we don't live in a democracy we live in a bureaucracy this is not to say aren't some good there are good people who who uh are in the federal bureaucracy but but you can't have an

3:52 autonomous Federal bureaucracy you have to have one that is responsive to the people that's the whole point of a democracy and one thing I'll say about this is I think this is definitionally true I think the entire purpose of having voting and Democratic processes in government at all is so that government doesn't just go off the rails into something like autocracy or dictatorship or a ruling cabal but that the public can in some way hold the

4:19 government to account for its actions that's the way I understand the role of democracy in this Republic we are not a democracy we are a republic we we are a constitutional republic but regardless yes we the people as voters should be able to hold our government accountable to redress our grievances with the state and to elect presidents to work on behalf of the public at large um and so

4:52 um and if if you looked at the if you asked look at the founders today and said what do you think of the way things have turned out well what we have this unelected uh fourth unconstitutional branch of of government which which is the bureaucracy which has in a lot of ways currently more power than any elected representative and this is uh this is not something that people want um and it's it's it's not it does not match the

5:19 will of people so it's just something we've got to we've got to fix and we' also got to address the the deficit so we've got a $2 trillion deficit and if this if we don't do something about this deficit country is going bankrupt so I love all that I want the government to be smaller I want it to be more accountable I welcome this I welcome the transparency this is good and even if you're a progressive and you want

5:43 government to do more things than I personally want the government to do you should also want the government to be more efficient Faithfully executing the laws rooting out where they're poorly executed is surely part of that constitutional duty of the president to faithful ful execute the laws passed by Congress not all of our Elite institutions seem to agree or even even seem to be engaging in a debate about that and I think there's a video that

6:14 The New York Times put together that really demonstrates some of the tactics being used to divert our attention away from some of the corruption that Doge has already unveiled if you want to understand what Elon Musk is doing now to the federal government all you have to do is look at what he did at Twitter in October 2022 Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion and molded it in his own image he focused on mass layoffs on

6:41 reducing real estate footprint and on pushing employees to resign so that he could cut back on payroll and real estate costs now he's taking those same tactics to the US government just look at the email that the federal government recently sent to its workers can I just say that are we already seeing the use of artificial intelligence avatars in this video is that is that what's going on here because there's something very robotically unhuman about this video so

7:12 far aside from that little smirk which itself was weird and and seemed like it might have been like an AI hallucinogen offering them a buyout to leave the government fork in the road uh type the word resign this is from Office of uh personnel management with with help from do I suppose it echoed a similar message that Elon Musk sent to Twitter employees in November 2022 with the exact same subject line musk uses a approach to his

7:38 businesses called zerob based budgeting he's now started to use that tactic in government and say basically government spending needs to come down to zero and line items need to be added back one at a time now one thing you should know about that is that that sounds like rationality right okay let's look at what we're going to do and spend the things based on what we need to do when we hear about things like I've cut the

8:03 deficit like when President Biden said I've cut the deficit or when the Congressional budget office talks about budget cuts and deficit Cuts or austerity one of the things that they're doing is something diametrically opposed from zerob based budgeting they assume budget growth and any cut in the growth of the projected spending is called a cut and called austerity this is a linguistic trick that has been used on

8:35 We the People for decades to try to make us feel like any attempt to re in out of control government spending is somehow ushering in the collapse of the government if we only spend 10% more this year than last year that's considered a cut if we were going to spend 15% more again I welcome the idea of starting from zero and looking at what we should do and not do from there and some of the same people that Elon

9:03 Musk used during his Twitter takeover are now being deployed to help cut costs at the federal level so it's worth asking how successful were Elon musk's tactics in reducing costs at Twitter yeah just remember that question how successful were Elon musk's tactics at reducing costs because this is where you're going to see some really serious propaganda word smithing put to action while he's cut costs in slashing back budgets and reducing headcount by around

9:33 80% of people corresponding Revenue has also gone down wait what now so we've switched to revenue we've switched from the cost side to the revenue side did you see that that little flip oh nope he cut costs by 80% uh but revenue's gone down let's start talking about Revenue now so implicit in here is that Elon radically succeeded Twitter still operates Twitter's actually been adding features at a faster rate since Elon took over including integrating Ai

10:02 and all kinds of crazy stuff but that gets ignored or that goes unsaid its valuation per investors has declined significantly from the 44 billion that musk paid for the company in 2022 and what happened to those who were laid off is that they were denied some of the severance that they were owed and they're now suing to recoup that money so this all begs the question should the federal government be treated like a private company I

10:28 mean if we we want to work in Balance we should probably get closer to that I think maybe we should be at least more like a private company that has to live within its means than we are the federal government doesn't have shareholders it's not Opera necessarily at a profit but there are constituents and those constituents rely on the services like Medicare or Social Security on a day-to-day basis you often see portray himself as someone with a big mission

10:55 that he needs to save Humanity by going to Mars he needs to save free speech by taking over Twitter he needs to save America by dismantling the federal government this was a fork in the road of human civilization but very little concern or care for the individual workers who are sort of getting caught in the Grist of these takeovers so you see what the New York Times is doing there can Elon do it oh I guess he can now let's talk about

11:23 unrelated things to the question we ourselves have asked this is one of the reasons why I don't think we hate the corporate press enough this is supposed to be the the highend of Journalism and given it's a Tik Tok video but it belies a complete lack of honest dealing when it comes to these issues and it also suggests a lack of understanding of relatively recent American history

11:53 because you don't have to go that far back for the shoe to be on the other party foot when it when it comes to things like Doge thank you thank you very much ladies and gentlemen uh Mr President um if you want to know why government doesn't work look behind you the answer is at least partly on those forklifts I mean look at Bill Clinton look They're laughing about how

12:23 the government sucks oh man yeah totally right yeah it's really it's horrible that's a laugh line for me I me these two guys would be ultra Maga Republicans in 2025 those forklifts hold copies of budget rules procurement rules and the Personnel code the Personnel code alone weighs in at over 1,000 that code and the regulations stacked up there no longer help government work they hurt it they hurt

12:56 it badly and we recommend getting rid of it radical absolute radical assault on our Democratic Norms right we I I don't recall the Press saying that President Clinton was assaulting our Democratic Norms by talking about trying to radically restructure the branch of government that he is the executive of this report tells us how to cut waste

13:26 cut red tape streamline the bureaucracy change procurement rules change the Personnel rules and create a government that works better and costs less let me tell you a little bit about what we found first some bad news we found that government really does not work very well in ways that will take a long time to fix a long time indeed that long time might literally be Infinity if we're being honest with

13:58 ourselves this STP down memory lane makes me long for the 90s Al Gore because the uh the 2020s Al Gore is um is a different animal altogether by 600,000 hirosima class atomic bombs exploding every single day on the earth that's what's boiling the oceans creating these atmospheric rivers and the rain bombs okay I wonder if them if the current alore has gotten any money from

14:29 us Aid this isn't new this concern about bureaucratic bloat and mounting layers of agencies goes all the way back to the Declaration of Independence itself among the list of grievances in the Declaration of Independence was this one he has erected a multitude he being the King has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their

15:00 substance so being concerned about bureaucracy and bloat and too many government employees getting in the way and messing with us and costing too much money that's not new that's not some sudden affront to democratic Norms or to the American Experience or American history it is as old as America itself one criticism being leveled against Doge and against the Trump Administration which has a point is that within the executive Branch Within These agencies

15:31 there's not that much money not compared to the nearly 7 trillion the federal government spends and with a deficit an annual shortfall roughly around two trillion and set to grow over time this is all just window dressing this is all tackling the small stuff and not really getting it the hard problems like the fact that Medicare Medicaid and Social Security are themselves driving most of our deficit they are the actual

16:02 structural elements of our unsustainability at the federal level I think this criticism misses the mark on a very basic human level the way I like to think about it is it's really hard to tackle any big cleanup job when I go into my garage on a weekend and want to clean the darn thing up it is overwhelming and so I have learned to practice the Marie condo approach and I think that is exactly what doge is doing but if you're not

16:33 familiar let's have a look I have so much stuff it's a NeverEnding battle to fight the Clutter hello hello I'm Maria condo this goes no joke this is amazing ah we have too much stuff we have too much stuff we're spending too much money

17:05 the best thing about what doge is doing is it's going through the closets going through the drawers in your garage taking all of the stuff out putting it on the bed on the floor and trying to figure out what of this is worth keeping it's actually pretty great to start small and work your way up on a personal level when we do this it's like you get little wins along the way and I think you know that's the sport joy and for me

17:30 I'm not going to get to the whole garage if I try all I do is get confused or become despondent in all my trash but if I just take that one drawer out take care of it return it to something that looks orderly I feel like okay now I can take on the next one and you know while I'm listening to a Jordan Peterson or whatever before you know it I am on the right track and that's how I

17:52 see what's going on with Doge they're agency by agency of the executive branch oh opening it up looking what's inside looking at how it's being handled maybe for the first time in the past 25 years so I'm super excited about that I I think that that should be celebrated and the fact that Elon knows how to go back to First principles fire people that aren't necessary so they can go do something productive instead of basically living off the taxpayer that's

18:20 all great this is kind of like the closest we're probably going to get to having a Javier Malay for America he's the best what's wrong with this you

18:52 know aside from it maybe not being able to solve the deficit problem in totality although it can probably make a bigger Dent than most people think some measures are already suggesting there's at least $500 billion that would be a 25% reduction in the deficit it could be up to a trillion or more it won't close the gap bigger reforms by the Congress are going to be essential but it's heading in the right direction and I didn't expect to see this to be

19:16 perfectly honest the first Trump Administration was not big on cutting spending they they increased spending they increase the deficit we have to be clear right about that but there is a deeper critique a constitutional critique and uh I think it's worth taking it seriously Elon Musk says president Donald Trump has agreed that the US agency for International Development should be shut down staffers have been told to stay out of the Washington headquarters and many report being locked out of the agency's

19:45 computer systems musk says the agency is quote Beyond repair he Trump and some Republican lawmakers have accused it of promoting liberal causes and just go on Twitter and see some of the outrage ous stuff that's being done by us Aid many other people that have looked into this more carefully than I have have noted that this agency is more or less a cutout for entanglements and the pushing of our ideology on other countries which is

20:16 often pretty gross so I don't really think American taxpayer dollars should be going towards promoting transactivism in the third world that's getting a little too close to proving the Islamic critique of America that we are the great Satan correct for me so thumbs down on a lot of what's being done by us Aid it's not really Aid at all even the naming is sort of a shell game to try to make it us think that it's all

20:46 humanitarian when most of it is really foreign interventionism that the founders would have found abhorent mostly we talked about Trump wanting to be a dictator on day one and here we are this is what the beginning of dictatorship looks like I don't know what the purpose of the democratic party we should have two parties that are good right we should have an opposition that doesn't immediately go to Hitler every single time it's not good for our

21:15 Democratic Norms to have such a non-functional opposition party in the Democrats I I am not a Democrat I don't like what the Democrats stand for but I do want them to actually be functional and this rhetoric it didn't work work in the election it hasn't worked for the past several years it's hyperbolic and um and stupid and doesn't work so it's just divisive nonsense Elon Musk you didn't create us Aid the United States Congress did for the American people was

21:46 it for the American people or was it for foreign aid to other people paid for by the American people I'm a little confused on this claim and just like Elon Musk did not create us Aid he doesn't have the power to destroy it and who's going to stop him we are we're going to stop him this illegal unconstitutional interference with congressional power is threatening lives all over the world they don't have the right to be disciplining people for

22:17 political reasons and they don't have a right to usurp congress's rightful role to appropriate money we've appropriated money for us Aid to render service around the world in fighting disease and fight fighting corruption in defending democracy we know Elon Musk is not interested in that Donald Trump is not interested in that but that's what the American Congress has done and we're going to stand up with the workers here I don't agree with that agency either I

22:40 don't think America is charged with defending democracy in other countries or doing any of that the American people are actually by a large margin as a people individually the most charitable people on this planet we don't elect a government to do charity on our behalf or I don't believe we should and I don't believe the Constitution sets that out as an enumerated power of the Congress but one thing that representative Rasin does get right is that the Congress is

23:14 or was designed to be the powerful body of the government in preparing to talk about this stuff today I went and uh grabbed a little pocket Constitution and read articles 1 two and three which cre at the Congress the president and the Supreme Court the actual Constitution itself with all of the Amendments is only this much of this book it's not even this is a tiny little book and the whole

23:46 Constitution and all of the amendments to it are just a small percentage in a certain sense there's only one sentence devoted to the president's power as it is is related to something like operating us Aid which is housed in the executive branch it is the president's job to run this stuff and that line goes He Shall take care that the laws be Faithfully executed and shall commission all the officers of the

24:19 United States so I think the criticism here that President Trump by pausing the spending being being done by these agencies that he might not be Faithfully executing the law as written is worth taking seriously it's worth taking seriously just because I don't like it just because I think usaid is a weird CIA screw job that's trying to manipulate the world for nefarious ends and fund people with ideas I despise

24:51 that doesn't mean I get to elect somebody who can ignore the law if that's the law that's problem number one and I think we have to take that seriously I do want us as a people to be a republic to be a nation of laws because even if I personally like what Donald Trump is doing I didn't like what Joe Biden was doing and he was ignoring the limits on his powers all the time such as

25:17 mandating people to get vaccinated there is no Authority for the president to do so there's no Authority for the Congress to do so either for that matter let's look at the Congress so the Cong Congress has what's called enumerated powers in fact this premise is deeply embedded in our constitutional structure that our government as created by the Constitution has specific powers that are enumerated when it comes to these things that aren't explicitly listed in

25:48 here they end up falling in to a fairly narrow phrase and this is from article one of the Constitution Section 8 to make all laws with shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the forging powers and all other powers vested by this constitution in the government of the United States the necessary and proper clause the rest here I didn't see economic development for the third world or promoting

26:19 democracy abroad or running our schools or operating Insurance programs there's a whole lot of stuff that sure stretches credibility as a reading of this of course that is the subject of all of American history's legal battles and precedent I I don't expect that I or you dear viewer are going to know quite how to navigate that but I do want to narrow in on one piece of the puzzle here because if the Constitution sets forth that the Congress is empowered to write

26:52 the laws of the land and that the president is really just supposed to Faithfully execute those for a very long time we have as Elon Musk noted lived in this Nether world where this fourth branch of government these administrative agencies have been given the power to create law and execute law themselves and that is what so much of the executive branch and the federal government now does administrative agencies theoretically are all part of

27:23 the executive branch of government we've had administrative agencies and executive departments from the very beginning of the republic since 1789 and the reason is that the president who is tasked with Faithfully executing the law cannot possibly Faithfully execute the law entirely on his own the president needs assistance and to that end Congress has established departments and agencies to assist the president in executing the law but fundamentally under our constitutional scheme of separate Powers agencies are part of the

27:48 executive branch assisting in the execution of the law the very first three executive departments were the Departments of Foreign Affairs or state the department of War and the Department of Treasury so a sense administrative agencies have been with us since the very beginning and that's really important to know it is a matter of America's entire history that the Congress grants power to the executive branch and that it exists inside of different departments but this is where

28:13 things start to get really weird really fast even though administrative agencies are part of the executive branch of government there are serious questions as to whether administrative agencies or at least some of them are improperly structured in violation of the Constitution's Provisions for executive power for example when agencies make rules and regulations they are doing so pursuant to delegations of power from Congress but are there some things that Congress shouldn't be able to delegate questions that are too important that the people's

28:36 Representatives should be the ones to decide those questions thus when agencies make rules and regulations there's a question as to whether they're exercising legislative power and legislative power belongs to congress not the executive branch in terms of executive power the framers explicitly rejected a plural executive in favor of a unitary executive and they vested all executive power in a single president of the United States yet Congress today sometimes creates independent agencies whose officers are insulated from the

28:59 president's power to supervise oversee and remove them this raises questions as to whether these independent agencies have recreated a plural executive in violation of the Constitutional requirements you got to remember the context right we escaped the king we did not want to recreate a king here at home and so the Constitution was an attempt to constrain government power by setting the three branches against each other with an assumption that all three would VI for power and that they would check

29:32 and balance each other's Ambitions that was the premise that's why for example the Senate was originally appointed by state legislatures it wasn't elected by the public in the states directly and that meant that the state governments themselves had representatives in the upper house to prevent the federal government from trampling on States rightful Authority and the 10th Amendment says anything not explicitly enumerated should be left to the states or to the people we have been operating

30:03 in what is arguably unconstitutional government when it comes to the way things are set up and built in the federal government for a very long time but very specifically when it comes to all these agencies we have this problem as this video pointed out and that is that the Congress has more or less kicked the can to the executive the law that I think of the most because it's it was you know being debated at the time I

30:27 first started getting into this was Obamacare and some of you might remember what was said about Obamacare by at that time Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi it's it's going to be very very exciting but we have to pass the bill so that you can uh find out what is in it away from the fog of the controversy yeah we have to pass the bill so that you and us for that matter can find out what's in it what does that

30:56 mean what that means is modern legislation is a collection a very long collection a collection that makes this look as Tiny as it is of wishful thinking and nonsense of the Department of Health and Human Services shall make magic happen somehow and we're not sure how and we're not going to enumerate it in our law and therefore we're not going to allow the executive branch to execute the law and therefore we're not going to do our job instead

31:25 we're just going to say magical happy thing things name the bill something pleasant like Affordable Care Act never mind that care got more expensive in the aftermath and then let these agencies write the actual law that entire process is fundamentally antithetical to the way the Constitution sets up the powers of the Congress and the president it kicks the can into the presidency and then it leaves the president who has the authority to run the executive branch to

31:57 do whatever he wants by and large with all of this power all of this discretion that the Congress has given him or her and so the problem here is that this outrage about the abuse of authority you have authority over all of them I have authority that's right yeah that's right you do the president does the president has an inordinate amount of authority and the Congress has given that to him and the Congress likes it that way

32:24 because then they aren't held accountable for when things go WR they just get to pass happy playtime Bill going to make the world a better place Bill and then kick it to the executive branch and that's been happening for a long long time this is why President Obama said I have a pen and a phone and I'm willing to use it sue me and that is what president Trump is doing now do I like that the

32:47 president has this much Authority no I really don't but our constitutional structure didn't imagine the kind of morass that we would be in it didn't imagine a world where Congress would set up permanent agencies filled with employees who are given the force of law who buy bullets because there's a lot of bullets bought by all of these agencies including Health and Human Services why does Health and Human Services need bullets I didn't recall bullets ever being used in the hospital bullets are

33:18 pulled out of bodies in the hospital but live rounds in the hospital I don't think so there's something else going on there and I'm happy even if it's unconventional that President Trump is using his executive authority to review all of this with an eye of shrinking it or shutting it down and we will have to wait to see how this plays out in the courts and How It ultimately manifests in legislation in the Congress maybe Congress will do its job for now I am

33:50 not going to hold my breath and I have only scratched the surface here we are not yet in a constitutional CR we're not but there is an example that is clearer that should be a warning and that I hope isn't a sign of things to come and that is the ban on Tik Tok I personally don't particularly like the ban on Tik Tok I think that's part of the censorship industrial complex even though I don't love the idea of

34:15 teenagers basically giving all their information to the Chinese Communists but the Congress did pass the ban on Tik Tok or I should say the requirement that Tik Tok must be sold to an American company in order to remain available to to Americans president Trump did not have the authority to pause the termination of Tik Tock because at the point where the where the law said the deadline is there if you're not sold you shut down that's the law that is a clear

34:46 example of the law actually doing what it's supposed to laying out what should happen setting the rules of the game and the executive should Faithfully execute the law and so that means president Trump should even though I don't want him to do that have shut down Tik Tok I want president Trump to succeed I think many of you do as well who are here at this channel but we can't forget what we're fighting for we can't forget that

35:14 making America great greater great again starts with understanding what makes America great in the first place the more we understand that the more we teach it to our kids the better off we will be in the future and that is is what I try to do on this channel every day I hope you appreciate that I know you'll let me know in the comments below if you don't think so and I'm looking forward to seeing what you have to say

35:37 and once again if you like what we're doing here head to Daves america.com And subscribe if you love what we're doing head there and make a donation because that's how we keep things going and have a great weekend