(DCNF)—Republican strategist Scott Jennings got into a heated exchange with former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson and CNN host Abby Phillip Monday after defending Vice President J.D. Vance’s pushback against “lawfare” targeting executive orders by President Donald Trump and efforts to address wasteful spending.
The Trump administration is appealing injunctions imposed by federal judges that targeted the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order ending birthright citizenship and Trump’s order freezing foreign aid while spending was reviewed, among others following litigation by Democrats and unions representing government employees. Jennings said that the “constitutional crisis” was created by the judges blocking Trump from exercising his powers as president.
“I think there’s a difference between saying whether you‘re complying with the law, and then you have these individual district court judges setting effectively broad federal policy that is specifically reserved for the president of the United States,” Jennings said. “I think we do have a constitutional crisis, and it’s being caused by these judges. They’re not here to tell us, they’re not here to tell us how to spend the money. They’re not here to set broad federal policy. That is the president’s job as elected by the people. These judges are supposed to be settling discrete, specific matters, not policy setting. I think Vance is right, I think Trump has a point. And these judges want nothing more than to continue the lawfare against…”
“I don’t think anybody is going to be surprised to hear that you think Trump is doing this,” Phillip said, interrupting Jennings. “However, just on a real important technical point here, one of the disputes, one of the main disputes is whether the executive branch can just decide not to spend money that another co-equal branch has said ought to be spent. So it’s not just about forcing the federal government to spend money. It’s saying Congress said, ‘You need to spend this money this way.’ And the executive branch saying, ‘No, I don’t feel like it.’ And the courts say ‘You have to.’”
Trump ordered the 90-day freeze on foreign aid on Jan. 20, saying that bureaucrats and a “foreign aid industry” were “not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values.” “If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,” Vance posted on X Sunday. “If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”
“My answer to that simply is it is the executive branch’s job to figure out how to spend money once it is appropriated by Congress, and sometimes they spend money that’s not been appropriated, but the correct political control is between the executive and the Congress, not some random federal judge,” Jennings said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the decision to shutter the United States Agency for International Development during a Feb. 3 press conference in El Salvador, saying that his concerns about its oversight began when he was in Congress and noting that the agency is “completely unresponsive” and “not functioning” as intended, later citing “rank insubordination” at the agency during a Feb. 4 Fox News interview.
“Do you think that J.D. Vance’s tweet is only about these district judges?” Carlson asked about Vance’s post on X criticizing the injunctions. “This is a slippery slope because they’re going to move on to what the next ruling is. They’re setting the stage so that they can say that the executive branch has control now over the judicial branch. They’re setting the stage, and for people who think, for people who think that President Trump has not planned all of this, he pushes the envelope constantly. There was January 6th. He has a myriad of people out there that would support the executive branch being able to rule over the judicial branch, because there have been no repercussions, and when there are not consequences and when there are not repercussions, you get away with it.”
“I get it, you want individual federal judges who hate Donald Trump to tie him up for the ne
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