Like a flock of aggressive but brainless seagulls at the Jersey Shore, they all began screeching in unison: constitutional crisis, constitutional crisis, constitutional …
Crisis. It’s always a crisis with President Donald Trump. The president could post on Truth Social at 2 a.m. calling Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas,” and hours later, the cable news channels will have brought on a Native American who runs a casino in North Dakota to riff on the racism crisis crippling America. Better yet, they will have brought on the race-hustling reverend, Al Sharpton. (Subscribe to MR. RIGHT, a weekly newsletter about modern masculinity)
But there’s something about a constitutional crisis. It writes the news. It confirms the average MSNBC viewer’s worst nightmare: Trump corrupt, Trump evil, Trump dictator. It’s alliterative, too.
Democrats, of course, only care about the Constitution when Trump is in office. They handed Barack Obama our founding documents and an industrial paper shredder and said have it, Mr. President. With Trump, however, the Constitution becomes almost sacred — which it is — but sacred for just a short while, until 2029 at the earliest. Sacred in so far as it’s convenient.
Immediately after Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency shut down arguably the most inefficient government agency in the swamp, the United States Agency for International Development, the big liberal cable networks started a flash choir, locking in their talking point du jour. MSNBC used the phrase “constitutional crisis” 141 times. CNN used it 69 times. (RELATED: CNN, MSNBC Hyped ‘Constitutional Crisis’ Over 200 Times Since DOGE Shut Down USAID)
People protest outside of the headquarters for United States Agency for International Development (USAID), before Congressional Democrats hold news conference in Washington, DC, on February 3, 2025. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday he had been put in charge of the US aid agency, saying he would stop its “insubordination” to President Donald Trump’s agenda. After Trump’s billionaire friend and advisor Elon Musk vowed to destroy the US Agency for International Development (USAID), whose website went dark over the weekend, Rubio confirmed he and the State Department had assumed control of the autonomous body. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Bright legal minds may disagree on whether Trump’s executive actions will survive the courts. Even an MSNBC legal analyst delivered the crisis chatterers a gut punch.
“I think we need to be careful with the term constitutional crisis because, as I define it, that would be a situation where the Constitution doesn’t have an answer and there is a pressing conflict. The flurry of executive orders, the chaos, that I think doesn’t get us to crisis yet. It is irritating for the courts,” Danny Cevallos told his host, Mika Brzezinski. “It is challenging. It could lead to a serious problem if, as you said, they become too congested with dealing with these orders. The crisis occurs, and we’ve already talked about it, at the moment when there is a court order and the president or the administration refuses to follow it, because historically, we don’t really have a clear answer for what to do in that situation.”
One thing is certain, though: Trump was elected to end former President Joe Biden’s own constitutional crisis.
The big picture. To borrow the words of Steve Bannon, Trump wants to “deconstruct the administrative state,” that rogue, unelected “fourth branch” bureaucracy that burns through taxpayer cash without oversight from Congress and pretends that agency “rules” are administrative law.
Then there was the time Biden gave the Supreme Court a crooked, wrinkly middle finger and rammed through student loan forgiveness at the end of his presidency, even though the court struck down his administration’s previous plan, 6-3, in June of 2023. Biden also defied the Supreme Court after it rebuked the CDC’s pandemic-era eviction moratorium, using dubious backdoor provisions to try to keep it alive.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden administration put a match up to a can of Axe body spray and aimed it straight at the First Amendment. Not only did the administration collude with Google and Facebook to censor so-called “misinformation” and pressure the platforms to nuke American citizens off the internet, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center collaborated with fact-checkers to crush conservative news outlets.
Amid the border and immigration crisis, Biden imported illegal foreign nationals under the cover of darkness, undermining United States sovereignty to feed the country’s addiction to cheap labor.
There were the drone strikes, as well — acts of war never authorized by Congress whose only real purpose is to give the Pentagon a fresh press release that helps them justify their obscene budget and appear busy.
Perhaps worst of all, Biden flagrantly weaponized the justice system against his political opponents, most notably Trump. He even regretted hiring his hatchet man, Attorney General Merrick Garland, for not prosecuting Trump enough.
For the seagulls currently squawking in two-box frames on CNN and MSNBC, none of Biden’s actions usurped his constitutional powers. He did not trample on the First Amendment, nor defy the Supreme Court. No, he only solidified his legacy as the greatest progressive president since FDR.
Sign up for John Loftus’s weekly newsletter here! Follow John Loftus on X: @JohnCFLoftus1_
