CLAY: We talked as we finished off the last segment about the state of Florida case surrounding Ron DeSantis and whether or not he has the executive authority as governor to allow parents to make choices inside of schools as opposed to individual school districts enforcing a mask mandate. That is a legal case that we will continue to follow as it moves its way through Florida courts and potentially beyond.
But in the meantime, there was a big decision that came down last night from the Supreme Court involving Joe Biden’s attempt to put in place an eviction moratorium by an executive order as opposed to via congressional authority. And, Buck Sexton, the Supreme Court finally slapped that down pretty aggressively 6-3, said it was outside the scope of the president’s authority, adding yet another defeat to an incredibly weak first eight months in office for Joe Biden.
The reason why this had to go all the back to the Supreme Court was because Brett Kavanaugh didn’t strike down this decision beforehand and Biden himself, Buck, even said, “Hey, I think this is unconstitutional, but I’m going to sign it anyway.” And thankfully the Supreme Court has stepped in now and struck this down by a 6-3 margin.
BUCK: Can we just step in and focus on for one second — and, Clay, very will laid out and so I feel like we know the issues at play here and the structure of what exactly happened. Notice that the Biden, the Democrat progressive impulse is, “Even if it’s unconstitutional let’s just do it, man!”
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: “Let’s just see what we can get away with. let’s see if maybe activist judges will bail us out, let’s see if we can do this for as long as we want.” Remember, there’s always a process involved. So you can actually get your way often for a period of time because conservative constitutionalist judges tend to be less quick to pull a universal injunction, less quick to say, “Oh, I’m one federal judge and I’m gonna override all federal policy,” right?
On the left, because they’re activists sitting in judge’s robes on the bench, they’ll do these kinds of things and not think twice about it. This is what we’re up against now when it comes to all aspects of covid. They will do the things they want to do even when they don’t have the actual authority, but they will use the power in that way. And unless we have the willingness to use power to defend individual rights where possible — Texas, Florida.
Unless we actually do that, we are going to get steamrolled on all covid restrictions and mitigation. I get people writing into me; I’m sure you’ve seen the same thing, Clay, in your inbox, “I’m not some big, fat cat landlord. I’m not lighting my cigars with hundred-dollar bills.
CLAY: Yeah.
BUCK: “My retirement is the one property or the two modest properties I own that I get some income from, and I’ve been paying mortgages and tax and utilities for 18 months now.” And they’re saying, “What the heck is going on?” Oh, and of course the government had like a $50 billion whatever it is — I forget the exact numbers, so don’t quote me on that but it’s tens of billions of dollars — for the landlords, Clay, ’cause they realize they’re just stealing money from them. I think they’ve spent less than 5% of it so far. The government’s not even good at giving people back the money that it stole from them to redistribute.
CLAY: It’s so frustrating, as a small business owner and as, like you, Buck, some of the money that I made as a small business owner — in fact, a lot of it — I rolled into real estate. Because this is probably psychological, but when you own an internet business, there’s some part of you, at least me psychologically, that wanted to have hard, tangible, physical assets. So I am a part-owner of a variety of different buildings all over a variety of different states.
I’m not sitting around with a billion dollars (chuckles) or $100 million in real estate assets. I’m like you and like a lot of people out there that, when you’re choosing where power is going to lie, to allow people to not pay rent while we still have the obligation to pay the mortgage which is being made based… It’s just a fundamental — and this is a big issue with the Democrat Party in general right now.
Every single year for the last decade-plus for sure they have become less friendly to the idea of capitalism and less understanding of how business works. And thankfully we at least have the Supreme Court, finally — although I think Kavanaugh blew it in not striking this down back in the summer, which would have prevented this from happening. But we got a president who acknowledges that he’s doing something unconstitutional, does it anyway, and unless we had the Supreme Court three weeks later to step in and slap him back down, we basically don’t have a Constitution.
BUCK: Democrats like this. This is actually a replay of the Obama playbook. Remember, “I’ve got a pen and a phone.” Why did he talk about his pen and his phone? Because he wanted to go around the United States Congress, the legislative branch once the 2010 — thank you, Tea Party — massive wave came in and he wasn’t gonna be able to get what he wanted anymore through the legislature so he started these different executive orders.
It was the Obama administration that tried to tell the Senate when it was actually in session. I mean, you look at some of the overreach, some of the clear destruction of the separation of powers because of the authoritarian impulse of Democrats. That was on display with Obama. You see it again with Biden. Here’s the thing: Democrats like it.
Even when they know it’s wrong, even when they know it’s a constitutional violation, they get joy out of the fact that it’s, “Ha-ha. Our team is winning. We’re going to do it anyway.” So they won’t pay a political price. Now, the courts have struck this down. By the way, the court also struck done earlier this week the remain… Well, they struck down the request for a stay of the lower court decision, right? (laughing) Am I doing okay here, law professor Clay?
CLAY: Procedurally it gets confused, right?
BUCK: Right. Yeah. So they struck down the demand for a stay from a lower court basically saying the Remain in Mexico policy for the border goes into place. It is going into place now. They cannot just get rid of it, the Biden administration can’t. But, Clay, there’s no feeling of remorse or even trepidation from Democrats when they do stuff like this.
They want to force people to comply, and they want to use health policy as a cover for what’s really a Marxist impulse here. Let’s be honest. This is the Democrats pretending to be Robin Hood — steal from the rich, give to the poor — although sometimes the people renting have more assets than the people they’re renting from! So it doesn’t even work out that way.
CLAY: Well, this is also why I think the ultimate legacy of Donald Trump is going to be so wildly important, right? Because you got Gorsuch, because you got Amy Coney Barrett, and because you got Brett Kavanaugh. Buck, if Donald Trump is not president for the previous four years, make no mistake, the Supreme Court would have upheld the authority of this executive order that Joe Biden just made. This is why you need a backstop that is going to apply the law in an even and honest and transparent fashion. And it is why it is so wildly important that we ended up with those three justices on the Supreme Court.