Is Trump Against the Administrative State or For It?
“Trump Ratchets Up Threats on the Media” reads a New York Times headline this morning. It refers to Trump’s suggestion that CBS should lose its broadcasting license over its editing of an answer Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris gave to a question during her recent 60 Minutes interview.
During the interview, Harris was asked pointedly whether the U.S. government has any sway over Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu given the massive financial support it has given him in fighting Hamas. Based upon footage 60 Minutes released to Face the Nation, Harris responded with one of her signature word salads that failed to answer the question. However, what aired on the 60 Minutes broadcast was a succinct, one sentence answer that also failed to answer the question or really mean anything at all, but which made Harris appear less like the babbling nonentity her detractors say she is.
Whether the edit was intended to help Harris or not is anyone’s guess. Of course, CBS denies its edit was misleading or so intended. And while Trump’s general complaint that the media treat him and his campaign with a completely different standard than they do Harris and hers, the 60 Minutes interview of Harris did not come off that way at all. Interviewer Bill Whitaker asked Harris challenging questions and pressed her with follow-up questions when her answers were unclear.
While Trump and his supporters have every reason to suspect there may be footage even more damaging to Harris than what was aired on the 60 Minutes broadcast, the interview was nevertheless a train wreck for Harris. The real question here isn’t whether CBS violated FCC regulations and should therefore lose its broadcasting license. It is, “Why is there a five-member board of bureaucrats who can make this decision at all?”
Trump and his surrogates have said things encouraging to libertarians and terrifying to the media about their supposed intention to dismantle the administrative state. In a video speech, he Trump promised to “dismantle the deep state and reclaim our democracy from Washington corruption.”
Those words in a vacuum would suggest he had a plan to undo the unconstitutional transfer of legislative power from Congress to the executive, born in the early Progressive Era and institutionalized by the New Deal, as well as reclaim executive power also usurped by federal agencies (insofar as they are exercised counter to the direction of the elected president). However, what follows during the speech significantly waters down the promise of its opening statement.
Trump promises to reissue an executive order he issued in 2020 allowing the president to “remove rogue bureaucrats.” That is fine as far as it goes. But what does Trump consider “a rogue bureaucrat?” The Constitution would consider any bureaucrat exercising legislative power a rogue bureaucrat, and the Congress which illegitimately bestowed that power a rogue Congress. There is no indication from anything Trump has said or done that he believes that.
On the contrary, his call for the FCC to revoke CBS’s license is a tacit affirmation of the federal agency’s power to write rules independent of Congress, execute them independent of the sitting president, and judge innocence or guilt independent of the judiciary. This from the candidate who calls for government action against private companies acting as arbiters of truth and censoring accordingly on their own property.
This is by no means the only example of Trump’s implicit support of the administrative state. His wildly popular alliance with RFK, Jr. similarly affirms the bureaucracy’s power to regulate food and drugs. Again, this is not to deny that there is a problem with American food or drugs, as there is with the news media. The questions are around what caused the problem and what is an appropriate solution.
Like Trump, RFK, Jr. doesn’t question the principle of unelected bureaucrats assuming legislative and judicial power. He merely believes these once honorable agencies dedicated to the so-called public good have been corrupted by big business. There is nothing in his, Trump’s, or J.D. Vance’s statements on this subject to suggest they question the existence of the bureaucratic regulatory agencies in the first place.
Listening to them, one would think everything would be fine if America could just get back to the pure first principles of the New Deal (eyeroll). There doesn’t appear to be any recognition that it is the regulatory structure itself that causes the problem by limiting competition from healthier alternatives, much less that limiting competition was the reason the structure was built in the first place.
Due to President Biden’s now tacitly admitted incapacity, the past four years have been an example of what life is like under the unchallenged rule of the unelected federal bureaucracy. Kamala Harris’ inability to even take a coherent position indicates electing her would likely be more of the same. This from a party bellowing that “democracy is on the ballot.”
Trump seems to sincerely believe there is something wrong with this but won’t attack the root of the problem. Some contend that this is because Trump has no clearly defined political principles. But that’s just not true. Trump thinks, speaks, and acts like an early Progressive Era Republican and has since long before he entered politics. And it was those Republicans who laid the philosophical foundation for the leviathan government the Democrats eventually built.
Should Trump win the presidency, Americans can expect at best some marginal improvement in the way regulatory agencies are run. But like his Supreme Court appointees, his administration will not fundamentally change the unconstitutional structure of the federal behemoth.
Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?