Throughout the Trump era, I've had to sort of disabuse myself of various kinds of assumptions about politics, assumptions about the ways in which politics can or do or should work, and a lot of the conservative reliance on certain kinds of institutions. I've found more and more of the course of the last years to be somewhat hollow. Everyone and their mother trumpeted how wonderful the Federalist Society is for helping pick judges, and certainly they're better at picking judges than, say,
you know, anyone on the left is. But at the same time, the Federalist Society has its limitations. It has certain things that it's obviously oriented towards that are more in the interest of extremely wealthy Republican gazillionaire business donors then they are, you know, aligned towards the things that
I care about. And this is reflective in the fact that a lot of Federalists society sort of tycoons in the conservative legal space wind up all of a sudden, somehow abandoning ship when it comes to conservative social justice issues.
Yes, they did get Roe v. Wade overturned, but.
Look at you know, Justice Gorsich, who might as well have come off of a factory line by the Federalist Society. It's right out of central casting and all of a sudden, oh, actually, somehow originalism means that laws that were meant to protect against discrimination on the basis of sex actually prevent discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, even though they don't
say sexual orientation or god forbid, gender identity. So I've the Trump era has caused me to rethink the old Guard, the wisdom and the thoughts of the old Guard in a number of respects for me to say, well, my
preconceived notion of this is maybe wrong. And it's not so much Trump himself, but the sort of anti establishment ara that Trump has brought with him atmosphere that Trump has brought with him into politics, that he's not going to rely on those the same old guard kind of people that you know, a President Marco Rubio would have relied on, or a President Ted Cruz would have relied on, or a President George W. Bush would have relied on,
or a President Mike Pence would have relied on. So I have tried to keep an open mind to Trump World and people in Trump World. I think often people will and especially with a lot of Trump's cabinet picks, I've kept a pretty open mind. When Pete Hegseth got nominated, there was immediately sort of a circular firing squad from some conservatives saying, this guy sting, what is this guy
has got a Fox News house bubb blah blah. But then I sort of was like, well, he's got some interesting qualifications in this regard, in that regard, in this regard, in that regard, Tulci Gabbard gets nominated Director of National Intelligence and the sort of neocon foreign policy blob is furious about it. Everyone keeps running with this slander that she's a Russian agent or something, which I find to be nonsense. I'm open to the idea of Tulci Gabbard
within that role. But then we come to Robert Kennedy Junior as Secretary of Health and Human Services and Matt Gates as Attorney General, and I want to talk about both of them, and maybe I'll give a segment to each one at the start of the show. I don't like either one, and I say this as someone who largely agrees with some of the overriding goals Trump has for both of those departments. I understand the deep, deep problems at the Department of Justice and at the Department
of Health and Human Services. I think pretty darn well the Department of Justice is clearly riddled with people in the FBI, especially who openly operated against Donald Trump as a candidate in twenty sixteen while he was president, did stuff that was clearly designed to politically help out then candidate Joe Biden. I think the FBI has been a disaster and in need.
Of reform for decades.
It's always been a horrible institution in various respects. I completely agree that DOJ needs an overhaul. It needs someone with razor sharp, aggressive thinking who can reform the institution, who will ruthlessly pursue conservative goals, and not just as far as being an ideological conservative and being a hard driver, but also in terms of actually understanding how to get it done, knowing whom to appoint as to be his underlings, you know, his sub people within the Department of Justice,
to attain the favored goals of the aministration. So I think in the first segment, you know I'll get to DOJ. But let me switch to HHS. I agree with some of Robert Kennedy's criticisms about giving people more choice and more latitude when it comes to vaccines. In certain respects, I agree with a lot of his criticisms that pharmaceutical companies get a free pass in a lot of regards.
I think.
The cozy relationship that the FDA has with pharmaceutical companies. The number of people who go from being head of the FDA to all of a sudden they're on the board of directors of Pfizer is a textbook example of this thing called regulatory capture. So learned about this in
law school when I was studying regulatory law. Regulatory capture is the phenomenon where a government whole regulator over an industry becomes actually very hirable by businesses within that industry who are able to pay him more than the government can pay him or her. So you work for the Department of Transportation, you're overseeing regulating railroads. Well, you understand all the regulations overseeing governing the operation of railroads throughout
the country. You're working with lawmakers, you're working with regulators in Washington, d c. Well, a railroad company Amtrak will look at you and or Union Pacific or whoever, a for profit corporation that makes money will look at you and say, hey, you've been working as a regulator of that, why don't you come work for us. We'll pay you double what the government's paying you. And you knowing that that's a likely career path for yourself because you're not
an idiot. Of course, that's going to shade the way the aggression with which you are going to regulate the companies you oversee. I think it's much the same within HHS. People in HHS don't have a big incentive to really crack down on pharmaceutical companies. Why because they get hired by pharmaceutical companies. Okay, look up how many former heads of the FDA went on to serve on the board of directors of a pharmaceutical company. You see this in
the Department of Defense. How many retired generals go on to serve on the boards of directors of you know, military contractors. So regulatory capture is a real thing. It's a real thing that afflicts HHS and the FDA as ah subset of HHS. But the thing to understand is that all this stuff that Kennedy sort of made a name for himself that's not all the stuff that the Department of Health and Human Services oversees. Let me just explain what the Department of Health and Human Services is.
Health and Human Services is the single largest executive branch, the single largest executive branch department in the federal government by budget, by dollar amount. It has tens of thousands of employees. I don't know about tens of thousands, but it has thousands of employees. It oversees Medicare and Medicaid, as well as the FDA, as well as the National Institutes of Health, as well as all of the federal government's sort of portfolio of funding scientific medical research. It's
an enormous department. I don't think Robert Kennedy is actually well suited to running something that big. Look if Donald Trump had made Robert Kennedy like his czar for health related issues, and it was a non Senate confirmed position, and Kennedy was going to have big time influence over FDA decisions or something, or even just make him the head of the FDA, I would be slightly less concerned. I just don't think the guy should be running the
single biggest division of the federal government. I was ranting and raving when Javier Basera got nominated to be the Secretary of HHS, someone with no medical background whatsoever other than having been his loan qualifications were being a congressman for twelve years, Attorney General of California, and super pro abortion. That was it. Oh, and let's talk about abortion. Robert Kennedy's sort of flip flopped on what exactly his abortion stance is. My guess is that he favors legal abortion,
at least through the first trimester. He has at various points stated that he favors legal abortion, no holds barred beyond the first trimester, even while he was running for president. That was the position he sort of staked out for himself at one point. He's all over the map. I have no idea what he thinks about the abortion pill and how it should be regulated or shouldn't be regulated, or what its status should be, what sort of person should be, what the FDA's position on it should be.
I have no idea what he thinks about, say, Title ten funding for abortion, sixty million dollars a year that goes to Planned parenthood. I have no idea what he thinks about the High Amendment. I have no idea what he thinks about out California not allowing health insurance plans to be sold that don't include coverage for abortion, California not allowing health insurance plans to be sold that don't include abortion coverage. I have no idea what Rober Kennedy
thinks about any of those things. I know nobody wants to hear Mike Pence's opinions about anything at this point, and I guess I understand that. But he pointed out today in a couple of tweets, Robert Kennedy Junior would be the most pro abortion HHS secretary ever appointed by a Republican, and I guess I just can't be silent about that.
I mean, look, I.
Think there were probably people, if you listen to my show pretty consistently, there were probably people who were frustrated that I wasn't more like Bellicos in my Trump support guys. I'll be frank, He's moderating his stance on abortion throughout the campaign. That's a real blow for me, and it's not something I can just sort of breeze by and overlook. A major part of who I am as someone involved in politics. Obviously, has to do with the life issue.
And you know Trump effectively ran saying he doesn't even support six week abortion bands at the state level. I mean, look, Trump can say all he wants abortions the state issue, abortions the state issue. If he truly wants to make it a state issue, He's going to have to pick several abortion fights. He's going to have to aggressively work to defund abortion at the federal level if he's really going to be consistent there, if he's going to really merit the votes of pro lifers, he needs to cut
off federal abortion funding every which way possible. I don't see how putting Robert Kennedy Junior in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, which is the single biggest vehicle for funding or not funding abortion. Are the National Institutes of Health going to keep funding embryo destructive stem cell research? Are the National Institutes of Health going to keep funding fetal tissue research using the bodies of
aborted children? We're funding that right now. Like I know, Kennedy is in general anti establishment, whatever that means when it comes to the pharmaceutical industry, but I think people are mistaking that for a clear thinking, razor sharp fighter who will be able to eliminate every single instance of waste, unaccountability, cozy relationships between the federal government and pharmaceuticals, and snuff out the gazillions of dollars that are being spent on
pro abortion things to eliminate them. I don't know that Kennedy wants to eliminate all those things. I don't know that Kennedy will have the motivation to do any of that. And if that's the case, what kind of an as a pro life voter? What did I vote for? Did I vote for anything? I mean sure, I voted not for Kamala Harris, which would have been the worst thing
in the world. Would have tried to enact the federal law to codify ROW, which at one point in his meanderings on the abortion issue, Kennedy himself said he supported. So no, I'm not gonna just sort of take it easy and say, oh, well, you gotta trust Trump. Why Why should I trust Trump's cabinet picks. His cabinet picks have always sucked. His cabinet picks from his own perspective and admission all four years sucked in his first term, Why should I grant him such grand deference. He thought
Bill Barr sucked. He thought who he appointed three years in? He thought this were how many Trump appointees did he wind up firing? When we return, I'll shift my attention to Matt Gates. I really think reforming the Department of Justice is important. I share all of Trump's goals for reforming DJ. I just don't know that Matt Gates is the right person to do it. Next on the John Girardi Show, let's talk about Matt Gates as Attorney General. Now,
let's set aside the ethics investigations. Let's set aside the weird thing of you know, I think two days ago Mack Gates resigns from his seat in the House of Representatives, and apparently today it was scheduled that the House Ethics Committee was going to release a report on Matt Gates the results of its ongoing ethics investigation. I don't see how the Senate wouldn't get that report, and that's going to have to be revealed to the public what exactly
Gates was involved in. Let's set that aside. I completely share and support Trump's vision for how the DOJ should be reformed. You can even talk me into I think we should have almost retributive prosecutions against people who abuse their power in DOJ during the Biden years, people who undermined the Trump administration in ways that might have been illegal during the Trump years.
Yeah, I'm all for it. Let's go.
I concur with almost with basically everything Trump wants to do at DJ.
I concur.
I think the FBI is a disaster. I think the ways in which the DOJ tried to provide cover for Joe Biden during the twenty twenty election, while a Republican was in charge of it, I think we're horrible. I completely completely think the DOJ needs to be I think there are a lot of career employees there who need to be rooted out. I think there's all kinds of
problems at DJ. Totally concur and if Trump had appointed somebody like I don't know, even like I've used this example, even somebody like Jeff Clark, who is sort of very prominent in sort of Trump aligned media. He's a constant guest, very frequent guest on Steve Bannon's show.
He was.
The focus of criminal prosecution for his involvement with Trump's efforts to not have Congress certify the election results around January sixth. Even if you would pick someone like Jeff Clark, I think I would have been Okay, I would have been Jeff Clark at the very least is had been a high level attorney within the Department of Justice. Is a very experienced, good lawyer. And that's what you really
need at DOJ. Is not just someone who wants to fix things, but someone who knows how, someone who understands the Department of Justice, understands whom to trust, understands whom to hire, understands how to clean house, knows where the bodies are buried. I just think Matt Gates is a bad pick if that's your goal. Like, he's very aggressive and agrees with Trump. Okay, that's great. There are a lot of people who are super aggressive and agree with Trump.
You know my neighbor who flew a F Joe Biden flag in his front yard for you know, several years, kind of to my annoyance to someone of the small kids who doesn't want them to be reading the F.
Word all the time.
You know, he's super aggressive and completely agrees with Trump. But I don't think he's necessarily qualified to be the Attorney General of the United States. Matt Gates is a lawyer. He was on the House Judiciary Committee, so I guess he has more than zero qualifications.
But I just think it's a.
Very weak pick for the kind of surgical work that needs to be done. That the stuff that I agree all the things Trump wants to do. I guess I haven't reviewed the entire list, but I'm guessing I ninety nine percent agree with every single thing Trump wants to do a DJ I want those reforms to happen. I think those things are important. I just don't think Matt
Gates is a good pick for it. And by the way, unless you think this is some residual like, oh, you're just sticking up for Kevin McCarthy or so, I have no relationship with Kevin McCarthy, you know, I certainly understand why Kevin McCarthy doesn't like Matt Gates. I kind of think that getting rid of Kevin McCarthy was a foolish move in retrospect by Republicans because Mike Johnson is not
that much different from Kevin McCarthy. Nonetheless, I just think this is not the right guy to be ag And then let's think about what the skeletons might be in this guy's closet. I mean, you know, there's a lot of smoke there with him that isn't there even with other heavily Trump aligned people. You can't just wave off everything as oh, they just don't like him because he tells the truth. Well, maybe they don't like him because
he did some bad stuff. I don't know, but I guess I just wouldn't nominate someone who is clearly strategically resigning from his office in order to dodge the release of a House House ethics investigation. I don't know. I again, maybe he'll get nominated, maybe he'll get confirmed, and maybe he'll do great things at DOJ that would be swell.
I guess, you know.
I also, I guess I just find it hard to trust a guy who's clearly using as much botox as he is. But maybe that's a story for another day. When we returned the idea of the Senate's advice and consent and why I think it's helpful right now in this particular moment, that's next on the John Girardi Show. So shortly after Trump gets elected, he sends out this tweet as the Republicans were trying to sort out who their Senate majority leader should be, which ultimately wound up
with the most boring choice possible, John Thune. Republicans are trying to figure out who their next Senate majority leader will be, and Trump sends out this sort of declaration from mar A Lago saying that the next Senate majority leader needs to support recess appointments. That's what the American you know, and blah blah blah, this is what they need to expect now, recess appointments. This all of a
sudden became this big thing. The normal way that presidents nominate officers of the United States, so top to going down into mid level appointees to the veryious executive branch offices of the federal government, is that the President nominates them with the advice and consent of the Senate. And this again reflects sort of the attitude of the founders.
This was a kind of check on presidential power that, yes, the president is in charge of the entire executive branch of the government, and he can direct executive officials to do things as he sees fit. But the framer said, well, we don't want him to be able just to appoint any total loser possible, who's just a complete hack into all these positions. He needs to get the advice and consent of the Senate. And the idea was the Senate of the United States, which was modeled after the Roman Senate.
The Roman Senate was this you can tell by the name. It was the council of elders within the city of Rome, from the Latin word senex, which literally means an elderly. So the Senate was supposed to be and is sort of in various ways as far as how it's structured. Is the wise, deliberative, less directly democratic body within the structure of our government, within the legislative branch, far more so than the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives,
everyone is elected with proportional representation. Everyone's up for reelection every two years. The whole House of Representatives can just change on a dime if the American people have a change in mood. The Senate can't do that, okay. They have six year terms of office, the longest terms of office of any officeholder in the federal government prior to the enactment of the Seventeenth Amendment in nineteen tens, senators were not even directly elected by the people of their states.
They were picked by the state legislatures, so they had a bit more stability. They were sort of older hands, maybe people a bit wiser, who didn't need to appeal to sort of populist sentiment. And the Framers thought, well, if presidential appointed officers need to be confirmed by the Senate, then that sort of ensures that the president's not going to be appointing a bunch of scoundrels and obviously unfit,
unqualified people. And I thought it was weird that as a result that Trump was yelling that we need to do recess appointments. Recess appointments are away for the president to temporarily install someone as an officer while the Senate is out of session, okay, and the president can just appoint this person as a recess appointment. If the Senate's not in session, president wants to make an appointment, he
can appoint them via recess. Now, the sort of messaging from Trump World was Trump needs to be able to make recess appointments in order to get started quick, because last time it took forever for Trump appointees to get confirmed. And that is true. In twenty seventeen, it took Trump appointees forever to get confirmed. But let's remember the different political circumstances between then and now. In twenty seventeen, Republicans only had fifty one of the one hundred Senate seats.
Two of those.
Republicans were Liberal Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. The Senate rules at that time were also much different. Debate on presidential nominees was set per the Senate rules, could last as long as thirty hours within the Senate. In twenty nineteen, Mitch McConnell changed that rule and shortened it to three hours. Now, the president's going to have at least a fifty It looks like Republicans are going to have a fifty three seat majority in the Senate.
They don't even have to listen to Lisa murkowskiir Susan Collins that much anymore. Debate is shorter. There's no reason why Trump couldn't get his appointees confirmed in a normally swift timetable. A LA Joe Biden's appointees in twenty twenty one, a LA Barack Obama's appointees et cetera. He could get people appointed fairly quickly. It's not Actually, I don't think there's some crisis that's likely to happen as long as
Trump picks good, reasonable appointments. Well, I think we now see why Trump wanted recess appointments, because he's picking a bunch of people that it seems pretty implausible that the Senate's going to confirm. I think pro life senators should have real concerns about voting for Robert Kennedy Junior as HHS Secretary unless they get some very firm commitments from him about things he's going to do. I think everyone should be concerned about Matt Gates until they see the
outcome of that House Ethics investigation. And here both sides hear from Gates, read the House Ethics investigation and figure out what exactly they were ethics investigating, and you know, kind of work through if Gates actually has the right experience, qualifications whatever to actually serve as Attorney General. So, and that's the thing I think a lot of messaging from Trump World has been a majority of Americans voted for Trump,
and they voted for his appointees. If you don't support them, you don't support Trump and you're fighting against the American people, and you will be primary. It's like, well, no, not necessarily.
Let's just do some math here, guys.
I'll guarantee you this. Just looking at Matt Gates, there's no way Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, or Mitch McConnell are going to vote for him. You have one more Republican defection and he can't get confirmed. And guess what it. Susan Collins is not going to lose her seat because she votes against Matt Gays Gates. Lisa Murkowski is not going to lose her seat because she voted against Matt Gates. Mitch McConnell's gonna retire at the end of this term.
He doesn't care. And there are other Republican senators who are in their last term who don't care who over whom Trump has Trump or Trump World or Trump supporter. Voters have no leverage, so you can pretend all you want that if you don't support everything. And also, what is this If you don't support President Trump's picks, you don't support President Trump. I agree completely with how Trump wants to reform the Department of Justice. I think the
FBI stinks. I think the way in which various actors within the Department of Justice have acted from twenty fourteen on, more or less, and probably from much longer before that, has been despicable in various respects. I want Trump to succeed in that goal. I just don't think mac gats is the right person to do it. And by the way, it's not like Trump has this great track record of appointing awesome cabinet secretaries. He appointed people who stunk repeatedly
all four years when he was in office. He kept and it wasn't like he appointed a bunch of losers at the start and then learned his lesson and was appointing better people by the end. No, he kept appointing people whom he didn't like and whom he wound up firing and embarrassing circumstances. He hired John Bolton, of all people who completely disagreed with him on most things with regards to foreign policy, and wound up just trashing him
the whole. Ever since he left, Trump consistently appointed terrible people. Are you really a friend of Trump? If you just say, oh yeah, keep appointing these terrible people, I'll vote for it because that's what the voters wanted. That's not how our democratic system works. The Senate has is a locus of power within the federal government. It is a.
Locus of power.
They are elected by their voters. They are responsive to them, and they are elected to give advice and consent, and maybe they tell Trump no with regards to this guy or this gal or whoever, No, this is not a good person for this job. I want you to succeed. I just think this is a bad pick. And I just hate the sort of circular conservative firing squad of like these loyalty tests that Trump people sort of put in place, like if you don't support Matt Gates, you're
not true, a true America. If you don't support Matt Gates, then you need to get primary Why no one in America who's voting for Donald Trump was voting for Matt Gates. That wasn't stated. That wasn't part of the deal. The deal was, I want to reform the Department of Justice. Great, nominate someone who'd be good at that. Nominate a lawyer who has lots and lots of experience within DJ who's
totally aligned with your vision. This isn't a question of being of objecting to Trump appointing quote loyalists, as a lot of media have described it. Yeah, the president should appoint loyalists. They're supposed to enact his agenda. Of course he should appoint loyalists. That's totally fair. What should he appoint people who hate his guts? That was the problem in the first administration. He kept appointing people who hated
his guts. And by the way, if there's anyone in America who seems likely to turn around and stab Trump in the back over something, it's Matt Gates. Sorry, So I think the founding fathers were sensible. Now, if you've got a recalcitrant Senate who is refusing to do their job for silly reasons, and you can't staff your administration the way you want it, and they go into recess and you do a recess appointment to sort of temporarily fill those seats, Okay, that's fine. I mean, it is
a provision in the Constitution to do recess appointments. I'm not denying that. I'm not saying that that isn't a tool that presidents could or should use in certain circumstances. This isn't those circumstances. Trump's just appointing. And by the way, I'm not saying all of his picks, these two picks Kennedy at HHS for ideological reasons that in fairness, maybe
Trump doesn't share. Maybe Trump is just pro choice now and is okay with HHS and it's various subdivisions, continuing to fund abortion in the various ways that it has under the Biden administration, continuing to let the abortion pill be shipped out with minimal restrictions as it is now. Maybe that's just the Trump administration now when it comes to abortion. I don't know. Maybe it is. If it is, that's a very sad thing. It's a very sad thing for the Republican Party, and it's a very sad thing
for this country. But it's because I agree with Trump on DOJ that I don't want Matt Gates to be the Attorney General, and I think it's wise for the Senate to exercise its power of advice and consent when we return. I think I might have spoken too soon about the whole Terrence Fraser Granite Park thing.
Next on the John Girardi.
Show, So Terrence Fraser, the CEO of Central Valley Sports Foundation, which has been Central Valley Community Sports Foundation, which has been the tenant at the Granite Park Athletic con Complex, which has been just a total eyesore for the city in terms of basically his inability to run it.
Fraser was a business partner of T. J.
Cox, the former congressman who has been I think he pled guilty to a bunch of different fraud schemes. They did a audit of Granite Park and found all kinds of deficiencies. They are I think over a million dollars behind in their various bills, and so the city said they need to leave. Fraser has said, hell no, quote,
hell no, I'm not giving it up. I may give up all my real estate and all my investments, but my purpose is to save these kids' lives, because that's what God did for me, Fraser said during a news conference at the complex on Friday afternoon.
This is the GV wire story.
City said that the Central Valley Sports Foundation, led by Fraser, owes the city one point three million dollars in unpaid rent, utilities and profit sharing from a digital billboard on the property. Present City manager Georgia and White sent the nonprofit a letter Wednesday with a three day termination notice. I was really hopeful that this would I mean, he's apparently saying he's going to try and fight the need this order to vacate.
Legally somehow.
I just want the city to be extricated from this whole nightmare, from the SIA, Terence Frasier, TJ.
Cox, this whole nightmare needs to go away. That'll do it. John Girardi shows you next time on Power Talk