Should Trump Be Able to Fire Everyone?

Democratic Party. They don't really have a true leader. They don't really have particularly smart or intelligent or outside the box messaging or thinking. All they have is sort of the blob of millennial political concerts who did a terrible job running the Biden and Harris campaigns, So they don't really know where to turn. The country has taken sort of this anti DEI turn, this anti trans ideology turn, and it seems like the Democrats are not catching up.

Trump's approval numbers are actually pretty good. He's still sort of in the honeymoon phase of his early presidency, and I think a lot of the things that they are most freaking out over early in the presidency the tariffs controversy with Mexico and Canada that I just don't think a lot of Trump voters really care that much about or are very worried about. They're like, Okay, let's just

see where this goes. Tariffs are the kind of thing that Washington people get really upset about, and probably it's just not the kind of thing that I think phils down to your average Joe to really get his engine revved up about. So the fact that they were trying to make this big stick.

is one of those things. I just don't think Elon Musk is that unpopular. He's disliked by Democrats right now, but I don't know how much independence and moderates dislike him. I think a lot of people actually kind of think he's cool. You know, he's the CEO of the coolest car, the hottest car company in America. He does all kinds of weird stuff with space exploration. You know, he goes on the Joe Rogan podcasts and smokes dubes. I think

a lot of people think he's cool. I don't like the smoking dubes part, but I just don't the Democrats, I think, have this sense that this evil billionaire is taking over the government and doing these horrible things. Now, let me sort of explain, because I think a lot of people have this outrage of like Elon Musk has no authority to cancel spending, blah blah blah. All right, so let me kind of describe a literate little bit what I think is the sort of theoretical structure of

what Musk is doing and et cetera. So Musk has clearly been basically what happened was There is this entity called the Executive Office of the President, the Executive Office of the President of the United States. This is a series of offices and agencies that support the work of the president within the executive branch. So these are people who directly assist and support the president's work as executive

sort of advisors. It includes things like the White House Office, which is the staff who work directly with the president, including West Wing staff, the National Security Council, the Homeland Security Council, the Office of Management and Budget, the Council of Economic Advisors. Now, the head of the Executive Office of the President is the White House Chief of Staff in this case Susie Susie Biles or Susie Wiles. I

can't remember her name, Susie Wiles. There we go. So this is Most of these positions are not treated as quote, officers of the United States. Most of the people who work in this are not officers of the United States, meaning they don't themselves enforce any kind of law. They're not tasked by the President with actually enforcing some aspect of the law. They are not, as a result, subject

to confirmation by the Senate. There are a few exceptions to this, So I believe the head of the Office of Management and Budget is subject to confirmation by the Senate couple maybe like one or two other officials. Let's see, I've.

but no one else is. One of the offices within the Executive Office of the President that was set up under Barack Obama was this thing called the United States Digital Service, and the idea of the United States Digital Service, I think it was set up by Obama to try to improve government websites and stuff like that. Trump basically took this and renamed it the Department of Government Efficiency.

Now that has led to some angst because the word department has a certain meaning within the structure of the executive branch. A department is usually a larger and more significant division of the federal government created by congressional statute that has a Senate confirmed secretary who is a member of the President's cabinet. So the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense.

The Department of Government Efficiency that Elon Musk is running is not like that. It was really only named that as a joke acronym. This is Elon Musk's weird, kind of dumb sense of humor. The phrase doge was some kind of Internet slang joke that applied to certain kinds of funny pictures of a dog that would say funny things online. It got picked up by people sort of in the tech universe. Elon Musk, for some reason, thinks

this is hilarious. He thought that it would therefore be funny if he could be within the government doing stuff to help promote governmental efficiency. So I think he honest to god, this is I think the reasoning behind this. He thought, wouldn't it be funny if we named it the Department of Government Efficiency and we called it doge and like, actually have some entity within the federal government named after this stupid online running gag joke of a

dog saying funny stupid things. All right, that's genuinely what's going on. So the Department of Government Efficiency is not an actual department like the Department of Health and Human Services, The Department of State of Defense, the Department of Justice. It is basically an office within the executive branch to assist the president in doing his work. So that's an important thing to realize in all of this. Musk is in charge of this. This is an executive This is

a presidential thing. This is within the executive office of the President, designed to help the president do his job. None of the people within the Executive Office of the President, other than maybe a couple of exceptions, like some of the Senate confirmed people, possibly none of those people within the Executive Office of the President are people who have the authority of themselves to issue rules or make cuts

or things, or cut spending or anything like that. It seems what Musk's role in all of this is, if I'm understanding this correctly, I'm willing to be contradicted if this is any if anything more arise happening. But basically, what Musk is doing is this is a presidential advisor who is being empowered by the president to have access to different kinds of information about government spending. He's been given access to Treasury information, and the president is the

head of the executive branch. He is able to give Musk that kind of clearance access whatever. There are some people getting upset. What business does Elon Musk have having access to Treasury information? Well, he is a presidential advisor. The president has the right to have access to anything

that's going on at the Department of the Treasury. If the President wants to oversee things directly that's happening within the Department of the Treasury, and he wants to task an advisor, an Executive Office of the President advisor with reviewing it and overseeing it, he has the authority to do that.

law sense constitutional law sense. Furthermore, I don't think Musk is single handedly able to affect any changes on his own. All he can do is identify things and propose things so that the president or the reve relevant head of the relevant executive agency can authorize whatever freeze in spending or cuts or laying off of staff happens. So, for example, it appears that most of the people who work for the United States Administration for International Development USAID, it looks

like most of those staff are being laid off. Elon Musk doesn't have authority to do it. But if Elon Musk is saying, hey, we're seeing that USAID is just a complete dumpster fire. So much of what's happening there is wasteful, useless, advancing left wing causes, like we need to just bring a halt to this entire operation and

just start over from scratch. He can propose that, but I believe USAYED is under the State Department, Marco Rubio or whoever the relevant official there is would make that order, or the President himself. So all of this is tied up. Now, all of this is being framed by the Democrats as an unelected billionaire Elon Musk is just doing what he wants. Let's address this. There are only two people in the executive branch who are actually elected, Donald Trump and JD. Vance.

That's it. Nobody else in the executive branch is elect did The idea is that the president enforces the law, and anyone else who's enforcing the law is there at his pleasure, and the president is the lynchpin of accountability for all those executive branch officials. Let's take Marco Rubio as an example. You know what, Actually, I'm gonna save this for the next segment because I want to go into this. But this idea of Elon Musk is an unelected,

unaccountable lunatic. No, he's not unaccountable. The accountability is there in the person of Donald Trump. And I'll explain that when we return. This is the John Jrardy Show on Power Talk. Elon Musk is an unelected, unaccountable billionaires running a rough shot over the federal government to Oh, it's terrible what he's doing, cutting all these programs. It's terrible. It's terrible. Is he unelected? Is he unaccountable? Musk's position is as an advisor working within the Executive Office of

the President. As such, his only role is advising the President, and in so far as the president wants him to advising other executive branch departments, the president can grant him access to the stuff the president wants to grant him access to. If there are cuts in funding that the president has the authority to make, or layoffs that the president or some other executive branch official has authority to make. Musk can recommend them, and the President can affect them,

effect them, make them be. But is he unaccountable? Is he unelected? All right, let's remember this is the point I made at the n last segment. Literally, there are only two people in the executive branch who are elected, the President and the vice president. That's it. Nobody else

in the executive branch is elected. Everyone else in the executive branch is appointed by either the president or hired by the president, or hired by someone who's hired by someone who's sired by someone who's sired by someone who's

hired by the president. Nobody in the executive branch is elected. Okay, but when you elect a president you get a decent sense of all, right, well, he's going to appoint people who are like him, So no one's yelling and screaming at Marco Rubio become the secretary becoming the Secretary of State. Everyone kind of figured someone like Marco Rubio maybe even Marco Rubio himself might very well be nominated to be the Secretary of State. We all knew what the deal

was electing Trump. He would elect someone with more Republican leaning foreign policy. He picks Marco Rubio. Not not a crazy thing. No one's looking at Marco Rubio as an illegitimate secretary of State. What I'd say, let me posit this. Elon Musk was far more obviously going to be part of the deal with Trump than Marco Rubio was. I mean, we weren't exactly sure whom Trump was going to appoint a secretary of State when he was elected. We only learned it was Rubio at some point after the election.

Probably people were guessing that Rubio would have been one of the candidates, but it wasn't. Really, It was not confirmed before the election that that's what Trump would do. Everyone knew Elon Musk was going to have a role in the Trump administration starting in August of twenty twenty four.

August of twenty twenty four was the first time that Trump came out during a rally and said, if I'm elected, I'm going to create this thing called the Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk is going to be in charge of it, and Elon Musk is going to try to work for us to identify for all waste, et cetera within federal spending. And everyone at the Trump rallies Elon Musk. Sounds good. Everyone knew no executive branch official,

again other than the president is elected. But insofar as like who's going to be part of the package of electing Trump, everyone knew that Elon Musk was part of the deal. And Trump won pretty handily, kicked Kamala Harris's butt. He's elected president with everyone knowing. Everyone's clear that he's gonna pick Elon Musk to run this government efficiency business. You know, he wins the popular vote running on that basis. So the idea this unaccounted and let me I'll address

this the unaccountability side. Elon Musk is not accountable, Yeah, he is. Every executive branch official has accountability. You know what that accountability is. It's the fact that they are serving at the pleasure of the president. The president has to be politically accountable. President Trump knows that if any of his executive branch officials perform badly are involved in scandal, do things that are unpopular. Ultimately it redounds to him.

Ultimately it's gonna harm him his political standing, his ability to get his agenda done, his and his party's ability to win the twenty twenty six midterm elections, his or his parties, or his vice president's ability to win the twenty twenty eight presidential election. There is political accountability that's at play for every single employee within the executive branch, in the person and of their boss, who hired them, who appointed them, and who lets them serve it as pleasure.

I mean, Trump could snap his fingers and tomorrow Elon Musk, his whole Department of Government efficiency thing could be gone. Elon could be kicked out. He can snap his fingers and literally do that tomorrow. So this idea of like this whole conception that Elon Musk is this unaccountable, out of control billionaire slashing fund. What authority does he have, Well, he clearly he has the president's authority. That's what he has.

He wasn't unelected in the sense I mean everyone again again, it was very clear to everybody when Trump was running that Elon was going to be part of the deal, and that Elon was going to try to slash spending, that Elon was going to try to identify wasteful government employees who weren't doing anything to fire them like that was all understood and Trump won on that basis, which is why I kind of find it baffling that Democrats think this is going to be like a really reliable

talking point. Now, Am I going to agree with that every single thing Elon Musk does. No, But I just don't find there to be anything actually incorrect or wrong theoretically structurally, as far as I can tell from a constitutional law perspective, the theoretical structure of how the executive branch is supposed to work. I really just don't understand

the kind of Democrat horror. I mean, I understand the Democrat horror he is knocking over these sacred cows that Democrats have preserved, these babies that they have for influencing the culture in all these left wing weights. I mean, the freak out over USAID is is really, I think disproportionate to the amount of actual impact that it has. I mean, it gives some foreignade to some countries of dubious value in many many cases, but that was clearly

their baby and the fact that he's touching that. It just has absolutely driven them completely insane. All Right, when we return, the president is starting to face some legal challenges to his and Musk's desires to fire and lay off people. Why that should not be That is next

on the John Gerardi Show. A few days ago, a large number of federal executive branch employees received an email that very similar that was clearly influenced by Elon Musk, and it was very similarly patterned off of an email that Musk sent to all of the employees at Twitter

shortly after he took over ownership of Twitter. It used the phrase fork in the road, and it basically said, Hey, there's going to be a lot of changes that are happening with your employment as an executive branch employee, as a federal government employee. This is a fork in the road. If you want to resign, click the resign button or say you want to resign, and you will give you a severance package. Blah blah blah blah blah, no hard feelings. If you want to stay, indicate that you want to stay.

And there's now a federal lawsuit that's being brought against the federal government by the labor union that represents a lot of these federal employees, saying that such an action violates federal law protections for workers' rights within for federal workers who work within the federal executive branch. And I think this is going to start raising a really really significant point of constitutional law, some stuff with constitutional law that I think our country has gotten wrong since since

the FDR era Supreme Court. And basically it's this idea that the president is in charge of the executive branch, but for some reason can't fire everyone he wants within the executive branch. He doesn't actually have the ability to control its personnel completely. So let's get into that when let's look at a football team. Right. When a football team, let's say, let's take the football team that's lost its head coach and is hiring a new head coach. Right, Like,

let's take the Washington Commanders, all right. Ron Rivera was the head coach of the Commanders. He gets fired. They bring in Dan Quinn, who's the new coach of the Commanders. Dan Quinn doesn't keep all of Ron Rivera's people. He doesn't keep his offensive coordinator and his defensive coordinator and his linebacker's coach, and his quartersback coach, and his strength and conditioning coach, and this guy and this No, a new administration comes in and you can't effectively be the

head coach without having control over the personnel. Having control over the coaching personnel is essential. Like it would be a really bizarre situation. How can I really effectively be a head coach if I'm brought in to be the head coach but I'm told no, no, no, you have to if the owner owner tells the guy, no, no no, you have to keep all the same offensive defensive staff from the prior administration. The Cowboys tried to do this recently.

They had when they brought in Mike McCarthy. They told him, well, you can't fire our old offensive coordinator because Jerry Jones, the owner likes him. And that didn't last long. Basically, that offensive coordinator ultimately wound up leaving Mike McCarthy wound up kind of taking control over calling offensive plays. But when you bring in a new if someone's gonna be in charge, they need to have control over personnel. Personnel

is policy. You can't expect a bunch of people who fundamentally disagree with the policy you're trying to implement, to stay there and keep working for you and be effective. And we've just sort of accepted this, like it's just like an expectation. Like the media is like outraged at the idea of Hey, the career A ton of the career employees of the federal government are very liberal, and many of them stemied the work of Trump forty five. And the press treats this as like, no, that was

a good thing. The idea that the president would want the executive branch to be filled with people who will actually actively support his agenda and not slow roll his agenda. It is seen by the left like there have been wild stories about how Trump, by wanting to fire all these executive officials is threatening the separation of powers. That wasn't an actual story from the New York Times trying to make that claim. No, that has nothing to do

with separation of powers. Separation of powers means that Congress does its thing and the president does its thing. It has nothing to do with the president within the executive branch of government picking his people. Because let's remember what Article two says, the executive authority of the United States of the federal government the authority to enforce the law is vested in Article two of the Constitution in the president. That's it. He's the only one. Everyone else involved in

enforcing the law. And I'm not just talking criminal law. I'm talking about criminal law, environmental law, all of the enforcing tax law, enforcing this kind of loan for this kind of regulatory law, this is kind of healthcare law. This is the whole panoply of the alphabet soup of the various executive agencies that are all tasked with enforcing some provision of law. The FDA, which is charged with enforcing federal law relating to the regulation of food and drugs.

That's an executive branch role. The head of the FDA is all timately answerable to the president. Now, the problem is, this is what happens administration to administration. A Republican administration comes in. There are certain kinds of positions within the executive branch that are deemed political appointees, and then there are others that are called career employees. The career employees all stay, a lot of them are represented by a union.

So the president appoints all the top people, all the political appointees, but they still have to work and do the work of this agency with all the career employees. The career employees are all Liberals, or at the very least the overwhelming majority of them are. They're unionized, they have various kinds of employment protections to prevent them from getting fired, and they basically have. They did feel in

Trump forty five. They felt in the Bush administration that they can just sort of not enforce that not do their jobs more or less slow roll things. Sometimes you had these career officials who worked in actually writing, like drafting regulations, who threw some poison pill in that stymy's the whole effectiveness of the regulation. A ton of these people just flat out don't like Republicans. I mean, like people were crying and moaning about, Oh, these people at

the FBI are being fired. Yeah, because the last time Trump won, a bunch of top level people at the FBI all tried to get him removed from office. They tried to they tried and succeeded in spying on him. Some of these top level FBI people were literally texting each other about how they're going to try to topple the President of the United States. Are you kidding? Me. Of course, Trump wants to clean house at the FBI. Now, back during the New Deal era, you had FDR in

the thirties feuding with the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court was full of a bunch of old Republican appointees. FDR was this cutting edge Democrat proposing the New Deal, and the Supreme Court kept blocking blocking a lot of his

New Deal ideas. This came to a head after the nineteen thirty six presidential elections, where not only did Roosevelt win re election, but the Democrats won enormous majorities in both Houses of Congress, and Roosevelt introduced this threat to pack the Supreme Court, to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court, clearly in order to get the

ideological outcomes that he wanted. Starting in nineteen thirty seven, all of a sudden, after that threat, the Supreme Court started ruling in his favor, and ultimately Roosevelt served in office for so long he was able to appoint. Most of the justices who were on the Court eventually died

or left the Court. I died or resigned, and Roosevelt was able to replace most of them, and he got the kind of court that he wanted ultimately, But during the thirties, the Supreme Court was feuding with Roosevelt, and there was this case in nineteen thirty five called Humphrey's Executor versus United States. This had to do with the Federal Trade Commission commissioner, whom Roosevelt tried to remove, and the Supreme Court sided with Humphrey, although actually Humphrey died

before the lawsuit was resolved. That's why it's called Humphrey's Executor, because Humphrey himself died. Basically, it said no, no, no, no, no. This Federal Trade Commission is an independent commission. Even though it's exercising executive functions, it isn't really totally answerable to the United States the President, to the US government under the president, the president can't just fired someone wrongfully. The Court pointed out that, well, the Federal Trade Commission, it

has it. Yeah, obviously it does some executive things, but but it also has kind of some some legislative roles to it because it's like making rules and kind of some judicial functions because it's hearing like appeals and resolving disputes. So so it's not totally under the executive brand. So

the president can't just fire it. And this is sort of I think there's also some real separation and powers problems here that that okay, Well, is this an executive what is this an executive agency, a legislative agency, judicial agency? Who is it under? Who actually controls it? Is it just as free floating thing? I mean, we have controls for all these other branches of government. The judiciary gets appointed by the president. It can be they serve for life,

but they can be impeached and removed by Congress. Congress is picked by the people. The president is picked by the people. What is this FTC commission?

fired for cause. No, that that makes no sense. So as long as you're working, as long as you don't I don't know, look watch porn on your government computer. You get to stay on the job, and you can't get fired even though you're actively even though you're not someone who supports the president's agenda, you're gonna not do a good job of enforcing his agenda. Really, we have to have a four cause like firing wrongful termination dispute

every time no personnel is policy. The president should have complete authority over every position within the executive branch to hire and fire as he will. Now, this has been raised with regards to these kinds of issues have been raised with President Trump removing the Inspectors General, where there's this congressional statute that was passed to create the offices of the various inspectors General, people who would oversee the various departments of the federal govern to inspect them, to

oversee them. It was created sort of in the post Watergate era where Congress felt like it had the most power and the presidency felt like it had the least amount of power. And basically it said, now the president can't fire them, he has to give Congress thirty days notice first. And President Trump is saying, no, I don't have to give you thirty days notice. That's an unconstitutional limitation on my power as the executive So I think

we need to the Trump. This Trump administration may resolve the question of should Republican presidents just accept this status quo of no, we just accept that most of the employees of the federal government are liberals and they're there to kind of stemy Republican presidents whenever they get elected. No, it shouldn't be that way. And if there's one legal development that I think could be good, it would be Trump basically breaking the back of this blob of federal

government employees who just stymy every Republican president. They get a chance to stemy when we return Trump wanting to turn Gaza into Atlantic City. Next on the John Girardi Show, President Trump. The other day of Benjamin Netting, Yahoo was in Washington. Trump announces at this big press conference that the United States is going to take over the Gaza Strip. They're going to move all the people out to Jordan or Egypt or something. They're going to rebuild the whole thing. Now,

this is kind of crazy. I will admit. There are no actual good solutions to the problem of what do you do with Gaza. You either just pull out and leave Hamas there to keep being horrible psycho terrorists. Israel has a permanent military occupation which will be terrible. Or you do something crazy like this, I will say, I don't want one American soldier to be at risk to do this. I don't want my brother to die in the cause of turning Gaza into Atlantic City, whatever that is.

But I'm wondering if this is round one of crazy negotiation stage that maybe results in something more reasonable happening. So we will see. That'll do it. John Girardi Show, See you next time on Power Talk