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Who Rules: The Bureaucrats, or the Constitution?

Who Rules: The Bureaucrats, or the Constitution?

February 06, 2025 35m

A century ago, President Woodrow Wilson imposed a radically new vision of American government: Rule by the "experts," instead of rule by the people. Charlie explains how President Trump's sweeping executive orders and aggressive attacks on D.C. agencies aren't just about keeping his promises: They're a restoration of the Constitution's vision of the presidency. Plus, Riley Gaines reacts to President Trump's executive order rescuing women's sports from the intrusion of perverted biological men.

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Full Transcript

Hey everybody, it's on the Charlie Kirk Show. Riley Gaines joins the show to recap the amazing executive order signed by President Trump.
And also we go through the constitutional question that is in front of us. We are heading towards the most high stakes constitutional battle of our lifetime.
Email us as always freedom at charliekirk.com. That is freedom at charliekirk.com.
Subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast. And as always, you can email me, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Buckle up, everybody. Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives. And we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
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Lots to cover today. As we speak, we have Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk and his platoon of geniuses going department by department, starting to audit your taxpayer money and how it is being spent.
And what is being revealed is just shocking. We're finding out that we are sending tens of millions of dollars to transgender parades in third world countries.
We are teaching Sri Lankans about gender therapy, DEI in Senegal. I mean, things that are just so breathtaking and shocking.
And the media is now creating a narrative saying, you can't do this. And finally, we have the long anticipated constitutional question front and center.
Finally, after over 100 years, we are forcing the issue. We are forcing the issue that goes right to the bones, to the fiber, to the DNA of the United States of America.
And that is the U.S. Constitution.
We have here the U.S. Constitution.
And it is a very simple question. Is this still the law of the land? Is this still the law of the land? USAID is a microcosm, is a perfect example of whether or not the U.S.
Constitution still exists as the law of the land. Over the last 100 years, we have seen this slow but steady march that has weakened Article 2 of the U.S.
Constitution, that has dulled the capacity and the impact for a president. Post-Woodrow Wilson.
Woodrow Wilson was the first president to implement this idea that we need a council of experts. We need to trust the scientists.
He was a professor at Princeton University, governor of New Jersey, became president in 1913 after the 1912 election because Teddy Roosevelt ran in the Bull News party against William Howard Taft, three-way race. Woodrow Wilson becomes president.
He was an academic, and he ushered in a new view of governance, that we're going to have these supposed independent agencies that exist regardless of political pressure. He wrote this explicitly, Woodrow Wilson did.
He wanted to have these agencies be permanent, a technocratic class, untouchable by the sovereign, untouchable by we the people. An outgrowth of that was FDR.
And the modern administrative state, otherwise known as the deep state or the fourth branch of government that comprises unelected, unknown and unchecked bureaucrats, has grown wildly out of control. In the administrative state, you find the Department of Education.
You find USAID. You find the EPA.
You find the Central Intelligence Agency. You find the FBI.
You find the Department of Justice. And the perfect example of this is in media coverage around Pam Bondi or Kash Patel.
They say, oh, how will the DOJ and the FBI be independent? Who's ever to say they should be independent? The Department of Justice and the FBI serves at the pleasure of the president. That is Article 2.
We have been propagandized and hypnotized over the last 100 years to believe that the executive branch has no power over the bureaucracies that, oh, it's an independent agency. No, it's not.
And secondly, the FBI was never chartered by Congress. It's a bureau, not an agency.
The executive branch is more powerful than ever, Yet the president is weaker. This is what the left has engineered, is they've engineered this shadow fourth branch of a permanent standing army that doesn't have to listen to a president.
And we are bringing the constitutional issue front and center. That's what this is all about.
Don't look at the trees, look at the forest. Don't look at the little, oh, you know, Elon running around with a bunch of engineers.
No, no. What Elon is doing with the President Trump's blessing is forcing the most consequential, high stakes question of who is in charge that we have seen over the last 100 years.
This is all an outgrowth of Woodrow Wilson from 1913 to 2025. It's been 112 years.
And as specified in the U.S. Constitution, the president is in charge of the bureaucracy.
Section one of Article two, the executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America. Do you see that? That's it.
It does not say the executive power shall be vested in an FBI director or in the USAID rank and file. It doesn't say that the executive power shall be vested in an oligarchy.
If you zoom out and you ignore all the noise and all the chatter, you are witnessing a return to the framers vision for this country. It's going to be a major fight because disassembling and deconstructing the administrative state, that is the life force of all statists.
It is the life force of Liz Cheney, of Nancy Pelosi, of Adam Kinzinger. They live off of the corrupt statist leviathan that has grown to trillions of dollars of scale.
It is the largest thing ever to exist in the history of Western civilization is the U.S. government.
So what Article 2 is all about is the president gets to decide who the department, who leads the Department of Justice. The attorney general reports directly to the president.
The FBI director reports directly to the president. The president can, if he wishes, President Trump right now, if he wishes, could call Pam Bondi and say, I want to see every single case you're working on.
The president could even say, stop working on this case and start working on that case. And if that makes you a little uncomfortable, that means you are victim to the hypnosis that the DOJ and the FBI are their own chartered portion of government.
They are not. No different than President Trump can tell Marco Rubio to go down to Nicaragua.
President Donald Trump can tell USAID, stop sending money there.

But all of the outpour, all the rancor that you are seeing is because they don't actually

want the representative of the people to have that kind of power because they don't trust

the people.

That's the core issue, is that they don't trust the wisdom of elections to be played out in full during a presidential term. They say it's democracy.
It's actually technocratic oligarchy. Stephen Miller described this beautifully, who is the White House deputy chief of staff.
Let's play cut 149. be vested in a president, singular, not in the bureaucracy, not an unelected lifetime tenured career civil servants.
Americans voted for one man, Donald J. Trump.
They didn't vote for a single bureaucrat at USAID. They voted for Donald Trump to make government accountable to the taxpayer, to make government accountable for them.
This is the whole ballgame. This is everything you are seeing right now culminates around this core first principle question.
You can distill all of the dialogue and the discussion and why they are losing their mind in the media right now. In Federalist 70, Alexander Hamilton argued passionately for a strong executive.
Let me read, quote, energy and the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks.
It is not less essential to steady the administration of the laws, to the protection of property, to the security of liberty, and to the protection of its citizens against those irregular and high-handed combinations, which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice. Hamilton argued for a strong, singular executive that can act decisively, unlike a weak executive held hostage by his or her own bureaucracies.
The president must have the ability to move quickly and act quickly. And Alexander Hamilton

said, well, if we don't have an executive, then we're nothing more than legislative supremacy and permanent bureaucratic stranglehold. President Trump is reviving the U.S.
Constitution. He is the sole defender.
And that is the question in front of us. Do we live under the Constitution or do we live under a permanent, unelected, deep state bureaucracy? This is the battle unfolding violent attacks on everyday Americans.
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So this clip got some play, but for a separate reason. This is LaMonica McIver, very passionate individual, saying that we are at war.
So everyone is thinking about the physical violence. There might be something there and maybe there's something to look into.
I'm not that interested in that because she's actually right about something. You are in the midst of a struggle.
You are in the midst of a wrestling match. And we don't know who is going to win because we are trying to

reorient, reorient and renavigate the United States of America back to the founder's intent, the fundamental and foundational basis of this country. Here is LaMonica McIver play cut.
153. Hey God, check down the city.
We are a war!

Now she's doing that outside of USAID. And it's very simple.
She is arguing for a protection of the oligarchy. We are arguing for a restoration of the sovereign.
We want the people to be in charge of the government. She wants experts to be in charge of the government.
She's the type that believe Anthony Fauci deserved a full pardon in the last couple of days of last couple hours of Biden's presidency. We are the ones that believe that the wisdom of the people, the decentralized power of the government in the hearts and minds and souls of every citizen is what matters.
And this is not going to be an easy fight. So when Elon Musk goes department by department and asks a question, who's in charge? What do you do here? Who authorized this? And they kind of get silence protest that shows that they believe they're an untouchable class.

The left claims that bureaucrats make democracy stronger. Of course, that is a lie.

Even when a president has a lot of power, they're accountable to the people.

They have elections every four years. When was the last time you voted for a bureaucrat?

You've never voted for a bureaucrat. And did you know that it's nearly impossible to fire a government worker? Which, by the way, is a very serious constitutional question.
How can it be so hard to fire a government worker if the Constitution says executive power shall be vested in a president?

Shouldn't the president just have the ability to anybody he wants at any time? Do not be surprised if all of this Doge controversy, if all of this USAID controversy is a forcing function to eventually get a decisive case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.
To get a case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court where the justices can finally decide, yes, the president can fire at will, which of course he should be able to.
Article 2 of the Constitution continues by saying this. Section 2 says he has the power and advice and consent of the Senate to make treaties.
He has the power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States. The president should have the power to fill up vacancies that happen during his term.
Article 2 says that the president of the United States has full authority. The most important power, though, is a single eight-word clause.
Decreeing the president, quote, he shall take care and the laws shall be faithfully executed. There's a lot in those eight words.
A lot. You know that most law students don't even know the U.S.
Constitution. They don't.
They couldn't tell you what it is.

Those eight words is what this is all about.

Does the President of the United States have the ability to say,

you're fired, you're hired?

Currently, no.

The answer is no.

Only for political appointees, but careers, they're basically untouchable.

You could put them on administrative leave

because they've tried to hold the president into a straitjacket. That's what they've designed over the last 100 years.
Nope, the people can't have that big of a say. The experts need to be in charge.
The career desk workers, the bureaucrats, they run the country. And this is all coming to a head at a full speed collision.
An unstoppable force meets an alleged immovable object. And boom, it's going to come in front of you at high velocity speeds.
The framers anticipated this pushback. The framers never granted or designed an unelected, unchosen, unknown, unaccountable, standing army of millions of career officials that can't be fired or held accountable regardless of what they do.
That is never within the founders' intent. And if you think that's okay, then you don't want the U.S.
Constitution. It's that simple.
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Joining us now is Riley Gaines. Riley, welcome to the program.
Riley, a lot of your work these last couple of years crescendoed yesterday at the White House with President Donald Trump. Tell us all about it, Riley Gaines.
Man, that's right. Thrilled to be on with you, Charlie, thank you so much.

What we saw yesterday was a total vindication.

I think that's the best way to put it.

It is something, this fight that I've been fighting,

of course, me personally for about three years,

many others far, far longer than I have.

We were stonewalled. By the previous administration, not even just stonewalled.
We as women were left out. We did not have a seat at the table.
And even worse, I would go as far as to say the Biden administration and even current elected Democrats, they worked against us by requiring these men to be in our sports and in our spaces, like locker rooms. So to have a president who displayed such moral clarity on an issue that really shouldn't require it, right? You mentioned Genesis in describing the wonderful promo of Hillsdale College.
It is that simple. It goes back to the first book.
He made them male and female. I cannot believe we have to have a president issue an executive order saying those are the only two sexes and, of course, declaring that men cannot compete in women's sports.
But that's a level of moral decay to which we reached and certainly could have been the reality that we faced had November 5th been any different. But I think this issue as a whole, the gender ideology movement, more specifically, even the issue of men and women's sports.
That's what turned a lot of people off from the Democratic Party. As you know, as I know, I think people turned out to the polls on November 5th to embrace Donald Trump.
But and of course, his America First agenda, his cabinet picks, but but more. So I believe people turned out to the polls to to reject this kind of absurdity.
So So, Riley, what exactly was in this executive order? What are the details of this no men in women's sports executive order? Yeah, well, it's really beautifully written. Major shout out to May Mailman, who has she's a policy director at the White House.
She wrote the executive order of the two sexes, declaring there are only two sexes. She helped with the chemical and surgical mutilation of children executive order really, really beautifully and thoroughly written.
What this executive order does is it withholds federal funding from any educational program that allows or requires men into women's sports, into women's spaces.

Again, like locker rooms. So it's huge, really.
But in all actuality, what it does is just enforce Title IX. It seems pretty groundbreaking.
It seems pretty riveting. But I mean, I hate to say it.
it's really regressive is what this executive order is.

It's taking us back in time 52 years. But, again, that's what's needed because of the radical rewrite that Joe Biden and his administration pursued, the most anti-woman, anti-reality pursuit that we saw from that administration.
And that's certainly saying a lot. So this is great.
We've even seen the NCAA come out with a statement this morning saying, hey, we are looking over this executive order now and we are doing everything we can to comply and follow federal law, which I'm not surprised by. I believe the NCAA has been desperate for an executive order like this or for some sort of action from someone other than themselves because what they've done for years on this issue and not just this issue, as they've sat on their hands, they've kind of sat on the fence and winked at both sides wanting to do the right thing and they know what the right thing is, but not having the courage, not having the backbone to be willing to do it.
So now this allows them the opportunity to do the right thing, but kind of continue to say, look, we're just following the law here. Yeah, so the elements of the executive order give it real teeth and real ability to be enforced.
The counterargument that some people in the media are making is, oh, this isn't happening very much. However, even CNN agrees that this is overwhelmingly supported by the American people.
Playcut 134. I think these numbers are really illuminating on this topic because I just think there's such a clear trend among the American public.
So transgender female athletes and women's sports, only 18 percent of the country says that they should be, in fact, allowed to participate in women's sports. Compare this to the opposition.
I mean, my goodness gracious, 79 percent. You rarely get 79 percent of the country to agree on anything.
But they do, in fact, agree on the idea of opposing transgender female athletes in women's sports. Riley, this is you don't get anyone to agree on anything like that.
Your thoughts. Yeah, well, that's the thing.
This issue has been made out to be a political one. But in reality, it shouldn't be.
It should have never become a political issue. It was inevitable that it was going to, of course.
But this isn't a political issue. It's a moral issue.
It is a humanitarian issue. So to see the way that women's rights to privacy, again, in areas of undressing, to safety, to equal opportunity, to see how that has been politicized in the way that it has with the Democrats resoundingly being on the wrong side of history here is almost remarkable.
It really is. And to still, you have outlets We have people like Joy Reid, or even ESPN yesterday, a major sports outlet who certainly understands the difference between men's sports and women's sports.
They've got the headline yesterday. It said, President Trump to issue an executive order that prevents people who are biologically assigned male at birth from competing in women's sports.
The beauty of this that we didn't see two years ago is Americans see through that. What an inefficient way to say men, people who were biologically assigned male at birth.
That's what I did in college when I was trying to reach the word count of an essay that I needed to submit that night. That is something to that extent.
So people see through it. And so to see these numbers, and again, to know just two, three years ago, the stand that I had taken, it wasn't popular at the time.
You know that. I know that.
I'm fortunate that you were at the forefront. You were talking about this, but even members of right-wing media, they weren't honest.
They weren't transparent. They were falling in line with the language barriers and traps that the left is using, the pronoun junk to these men as trans women.
People are desperate for clear language. My grandma, she doesn't know what a trans woman is.
She hears this and she's like, you know, Riley, does that mean man who identifies as a woman or woman who identifies as a man? So people have had enough. So if the Democrats keep playing on this, they will certainly keep losing.
A good guide for everyone in the audience. Every time you hear trans man or trans woman, just replace it with not a, So not a woman or not a man.
That's it. Or fake.
So fake man, fake woman. That's a great little.
I finally got it that way. I was like, OK, got it.
So trans is a replacement for fake. Riley, but in the audience yesterday with Speaker Mike Johnson and several senators,

if we are serious about this sticking, we need congressional action as well. What is the status of the legislation that would prohibit men from being in female sports? And are Democrats still against this? Yeah, I love that you asked this because a lot of people see what happened yesterday and they want to wipe their hands and think that we're done.

Oh, my gosh, we are absolutely not done.

This does not absolve the states from doing what they need to do.

And it certainly does not prevent this from being overturned as quickly as it was implemented potentially in four years.

So where this stands at the federal level, just a few weeks ago, Congress passed H.R. 28, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act.

I don't know. potentially, in four years.
So where this stands at the federal level, just a few weeks ago, Congress passed H.R. 28, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, sponsored by Representative Greg Stuby.
They're able to say it passed with bipartisan support because two Texas Democrats voted in support, the rest of them, over 200 of them, 200 Democrats, mothers and fathers of their own young daughters, voted in opposition of protecting women and girls in sports. But nonetheless, it passed.
But the problem that we're having now and where we need the pressure applied, from what I understand, the Senate does not want to take this bill up. They believe that it won't pass, which is certainly a fair assumption to make.
But nonetheless, because of Chuck Schumer and his strategy and lack of leadership, lack of courage in the 118th Congress, they did not hear this on the Senate floor. Therefore, they got out of voting for it.
It couldn't really be this big hot-button topic for a lot of these senators who were running for re-election just last year because they didn't vote on it. We need Senator Soone to act.
We need him to bring this to the House floor to have a vote. So number one, we know who stands with women and who does not.
Two, it has the chance at least to be codified into law, passed on to the president's desk for him to sign. So that's where the pressure campaign lies now, I believe.
Really encouraging these senators, let them know we're watching. We're waiting and we're watching.
Do the right thing. Bring this to the floor for a vote and vote for women.
Well said, Riley. Thank you.
We're doing a big campus push with you as well. 30 seconds.
Tell our audience about it. Man, I can't wait.
What you guys have been able to do on college campuses among the youth is pivotal. I know your listeners know that, how that shaped the election, how that shaped what we saw yesterday, those little girls surrounding President Trump.
Had you guys not been doing what you do, that visual, that picture would not exist. I think we're going to be on about maybe 30 different college campuses this semester.
So very excited for that. Headed to a Turning Point event right now, actually.
So just thrilled to be a contributor, what you guys are doing. I'm just honored to be a part of it.
Riley, keep up the great work. We will speak to you soon.
Thank you so much. You've got it, Charlie.
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That is noblegoldinvestments.com, noblegoldinvestments.com. So USAID, 15,000 people put on administrative leave.
And then what is next? Well, there's no surprises here with this administration. It's whatever the president ran on the campaign trail.
So far, he's just going boom, boom, boom, one at a time. He said no men and female sports.
He said no money to CRT or DEI schools. He said we're going to get rid of chemical castration.
We're going to unleash the economy and secure the border. He's going piece by piece by piece by piece, element by element.
And what's next? The eradication and the abolishment of the Department of Education. Reagan couldn't do it.
George W. Bush couldn't do it.
George W. Bush wouldn't want to do it.
He was all about growing the size and scope of the Department of Education. It's time to end it.
It's time to send it back to the states. It is time to say that it never should have been a role of the federal government.
Since the Department of Education was started under Jimmy Carter, America's education system has only grown more costly, more bloated, and less effective.

Republicans have been promising to get rid of it for decades, but when given power, they did nothing.

Washington, D.C. insiders assumed this administration would just pull the same bait and switch, but oh, the Department of Education is next.

Senator Kennedy from Louisiana has this to say. Play cut 76.

To my friends who are upset, I would say with respect, you know, call somebody who cares.

They better get used to this. It's USAID today.
It's going to be Department of Education tomorrow.

Understand that for the better part of our country, we never had a Department of Education. Education was done by the local church, the local school, local parents.
We were a smarter, wiser, better prepared, better equipped nation when we did not have this federal bureaucracy of the Department of Education. The U.S.
government in

1958 passed the National Defense Education Act, which provided funding for science, math, and

foreign language learning. LBJ came along and passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,

ESEA of 1965, and then the Higher Education Act of 1965. There was a new office that was created

of the Department of Health Education Welfare, and then Jimmy Carter, another of 1965. There was a new office that was created of the Department of Health, Education, Welfare,

and then Jimmy Carter, another master class from him,

in 1979 put on the Department of Education Organization Act.

The creation of the Department of Education was official on May 4th, 1980.

And we have slid ever since.