The Armstrong and Getty Show. I got a bunch of stuff to talk about coming up. The anti racist stuff has really taken off even faster than I feared. Um, the conversations anti racism training in government and schools and everything across the country really back hard and fast since Tuesday. Critical race theory. It is insidious, it is the new racism. It will destroy the country. Are we sitting on the
breaking news or could we go ahead and say it there? Yeah, the great Hank Aaron has passed, that true home run king has passed, and we'll pay loving tribute to him. Uh. Sorry, you don't consider no, No, I do not those tiny testicles and giantead There's no need to bring his raisins into this. I don't think. Oh my gosh, this is an embarrassing moment for the show. From that idiocy to uh.
One of the smartest people we know, Alan Hea Chen, David and Diane Stephie fellow in American Public Policy Studies at the Uver Institution and host of the most excellent podcast Crossing Lines with lon Hea Chen Long He how are you, sir, I'm well, good morning, gentlemen. Uh, We're glad to have you with us. So the new president famously issuing seventeen edicts from on high, one of which you're just discussing earlier executive orders fundamentally changing law in
the United States. How did we get to the point where we essentially have a king who writes edicts and it changes law. Yeah. I hate it, I really do. And I by the way, I hate it whether a Republican president does it or a Democratic president. I especially hate it when I see some of the stuff that was signed into into law via executive order by by President Biden a few days ago. I think really when it started was presidents felt the need to show that
they were doing something. They felt the need to to be spurred to action, and they couldn't work with Congress. You know, Congress has been dysfunctional for many, many years, and so they thought, well, why don't I just go
and do it myself. And so, starting at the very end of the George W. Bush administration, through Barack Obama's terms in office, through of course Trump's term in office, and now Biden's following this trend, you know, presidents just decide to kind of go rogue and do their own thing. There's actually really there's a really famous Saturday Night Live skating You guys haven't seen it, you should look it up. Uh. That came during the that the Obama administration when Obama
used executive action to create the Dot up program. This program for you know, for the so called dreamers, and it's the spoof on the old Schoolhouse Rock video that many of us watched the children where they talked about how it bill becomes a law. But this spoof is basically about executive orders, and the gist of it is, you know, instead of all the processes that you learn about going to the House, going to the Senate, this piece of paper shows up and he says, I basically
just happened. And that's essentially what executive action is. And it's really it's really pernicious because it's circumvents what what the founders intended, what our constitution intended, which is to have a branch of government, the Congress, that legislation makes laws, and another branch of government the executive that executes those laws. And executive action in many ways circumvent that constitutional design. So you can understand the um what pushes you as
a president to want to do it? Why is Congress abandoned their duty. Why did they give up that power and feel free to throw And where are the courts in all this? Yeah? Well, the courts step in, you know, because what happens is the president gets sued over a lot of these executive actions, and so the courts have to step in and say what is and what isn't you know? The presidents are supposed to use executive orders in particular, there's also this other mechanism called presidential memoranda.
It's basically the same idea. They're really supposed to take a piece of law that already exists and if there's some element of executing it that they want to do differently, that's what executive action is for. So sometimes the court step in and say, no, President can't do this too much authority, this is not constitutional. Uh. The reason why Congress doesn't do anything about it is because Congress is
incapable many times, because it's so politically deadlocked. There's so much polarization within Congress that it's really hard to get them to do much of anything sometimes. And it's tough because we have big problems that we need them to deal with, and they just can't come together. To do it. I mean, look at how long it took to figure out what we were going to do to solve some of the economic issues around coronavirus and around the shutdowns.
And even then they didn't really solve them. They just kind of came together and spent more money. It's very frustrating to people, But really it's because of Congress's inability to do the people's work that presidents, I think, feel like, okay, well I'll just step in and I'll do something that's
extra constitutional. I was kind of hoping our remember when Barack Obama was, you know, using his pen and phone that you know, various pundits were saying, well, he'll learn that these things can be overturned and the next election and presidents will learn. But I don't think presidents are going to learn any lesson. I mean, you've got a chance to do to have what you want done immediately. Um, Congress isn't really interested in doing it, and you know
you've got four to eight years. So I don't think presidents are going to learn any lesson about this. No, of course not. And the courts are slow, right, it doesn't it sometimes that the courts will issue some kind of immediate injunction. You may remember during the whole debate over the so called Muslim ban at the start of the Trump administration, the court did step in and and and grant injunctive relief. So they stepped in the way of that going into place very quickly. But for the
most part, courts are slow. It takes time for cases to make their way through the judicial system, and so presidents just say well why not, you know, and until people step up and say I don't vote, or step and say look, this is not something that we find acceptable. Yes, we like it when presidents go out and they do what they say they're going to do, but we don't like it when they do things that, frankly are beyond
the scope of the constitution. That's the only time when when presidents and when the executive branch is gonna start listening and say, okay, well maybe business is the best way to get things done here' The thing I'll say, guys, is that the problem with executive action is it's so easily undone by the next administration. I mean you're seeing
that already. Yeah, it's amazing. There's there are things that that Trump did that on day one, Biden can say no, we're not gonna do it that way anymore, and then there's no durability of policy. So we end up, you know, jerking back and forth between these extremes. It's not good for the country and it's just not good for where we're all headed. Lon h Chen with the Hoover Institution, host of the podcast Crossing Lines with lineha Chan is on the line, Uh, that has just uh sucked every
little bit of hope out of me here. I don't know if that was your because as you were talking, I was thinking about, Okay, now, how do we rectify that? How do we the bipartisan or Congress. I mean, for instance, you would think both Republicans and Democrats would resent it when a guy on a day completely guts immigration policy
and reform. I mean, it just changes it fundamentally. You'd think Congress would think, hey, that's our jobs, come on, but I don't know, they're just too busy fundraising and running for re election again. Yeah, well, I think that's part of it. And there's a shirts and skins mentality to you know. I think when the when the Republicans had Trump in office, they were they were not as fond of speaking up against executive action, you know, because
they probably agreed with it. And now in a bunch of Democrats won't step up and say we disagree with what Bid is doing because they, you know, like what he's doing. But all of these members of Congress, every time a president exerts executive action in the way that we saw Obama do it, the way we saw Trump
do it, the way we're seeing Biden do it. Every time they do that, they are diminishing the power of the Congress just a little bit more, and they are they're chipping away at what the Congress should be doing, which is writing laws and needs to do their job. These guys to step up, they need to in some cases. Guess they gotta work together, and they've got to come up with solutions that can actually pass. Democrats and Republicans together.
That's what makes it so hard. But if they don't do it, guess what Presidents are gonna keep doing what they're doing. It's like, you know, it's like a small child. If you don't tell a small child, no, don't do that, you're gonna get hurt. Or no, they don't do that. It's not good for you. They're gonna keep doing it until they can get you know, they they keep getting away with it. So that's the problem we have. Your
Congress is like a bunch of small children. I have noticed that with the child think yes, indeed without my kids. My final question, any thoughts in general about the upcoming alleged impeachment that everybody hasn't heard a thousand times before. Um. The one thing I keep hearing, by the way, from Republicans and Democrats on this is they just wanted over with. I don't know anybody who wants to spend a long time talking about or thinking about this. You know, Donald
Trump is the former president. Now for those who didn't like him, there will be plenty of ways to quote hold him accountable. For those who do like him, they can keep figuring out how to get his misses and to follow him through whatever media channels he sets up. I just don't think that there's an appetite at this point. You know, we we we have big problems as the country. We really do that we've got to get to and now we're going to spend whatever two weeks, three weeks,
whatever it is talking about a former president. I just don't think the appetite is there amongst most Americans. No, it feels so people watching they just want to move on. It feels so irrelevant now and it's just Friday, two days later, three days later. Wait, wait until you know, a month later, and there will be a number of events, you know, domestically and around the globe that have our attention, and I just I just can't imagine that anybody's going
to be interested in at that point. And we will move on to those matters. The next conversation we have with Lanha Chen I Hope Lani of the Hoover Institution and crossing lines with Lanha Chen. Look it up, subscribe to it, Lani. It's always great to talk. Thank you, Thank you guys on a good weekend. You too. One thing I thought about bringing up with him just because
I heard an interesting podcast conversation about it. Um at the risk of too much politics, because I'm trying to spend less time talking and thinking and reading about it because I think it's healthy. But um, You've got a big chunk of the Republican Party that is very very Trumpey Trump still has a very high approval rating in the Republican Party. Then you got, you know, like the Mitt Romney um Lynn Cheney wing. I don't know how
many of those people are. And Trump talked about forming a new party, but there's some belief now that there's a bit of a game of chicken of how about you form a new party? Mitt Romney and Lynn Chaney. You're not happy with the way the Trump version of Republicans. How about you form a new party? We're this party
and both sides feeling that way. You know, Mitt Romney Lynn Chaney crowd thinking you, yeah, go form your Patriot party around Donald Trump, and the Donald Trump crowds thinking not about you go form a new party because both parties over the years have gone out of their way to put into place a bunch of rules, laws, whatever they are, to make it very difficult for a third party to ever get a lot of traction. Democrats and
Republicans work together on this. Yeah, there's great institutional advantage to actually being the Republican party. Um, there's all kinds of you know, money and uh, an opportunity for being on the ballot. Stuff that's just so much easier. An enormous infrastructure, Yeah, enormous infrastructure, and so you can see why why if there are in numbers way more trumpets
then there are not. And I think that's it's definitely the case in the House based on the vote last week as we sit and speak today, Yes, that's true. Then that then you can see why they'd say, hey, well you go farm your own party. Good luck with that, yea, yeah, And I think that game of Chicken is going to be interesting to follow over the next however long well, at the risk of lightning striking me, and I'd have it coming honestly. Two will be a major milestone in
that question. Who has the reins, who has that support. Although there's a tendency in among the jabbering classes of which we are apart um to make ground grand pronouncements of the way things are going to be going forward, when honestly, always, always, always, the fact that the Clintons remained on the scene as long as they did, semi relevant or or clinging bitterly to relevance was an outlier.
It's extremely rare these days. So what the political landscape looks like in two years, four years place nobody knows. Nobody has any idea