The Keith Edwards Show - Trump's INSANE THREAT Suddenly BACKFIRES (with Andrew Egger)

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Trump went off on Truth Social last night, declaring Biden’s last-minute pardons “void” because they were signed with an autopen—specifically calling out Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, and hinting at new investigations into them. I brought on White House correspondent from The Bulwark, Andrew Egger, to break it all down.Follow Andrew here: https://x.com/EggerDCSupport My Work:    / @keithedwards  Subscribe to my Substack: http://keithedwards.substack.comBuy a Democracy Hat: https://keithsdebateclub.com/products...Follow me on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/keithedwards...Follow me on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@keithedwardsFollow me on Instagram:   / keithedwards  Follow me on TikTok:   / keithedwards  Follow me on X:   / keithedwards  

Late last night when you were sleeping, I was certainly sleeping. Donald Trump, the President of the United States, was up posting on a social media platform. He posted, thank you to my talented friend Paul Anka for doing a new version of my way, okay? Then he said, great playing with Scott Lambert, a terrific golfer. And then literally a minute later, he wrote this unconstitutional doozy where he said, quote, the pardons that Sleepy Joe Biden gave the unselect committee of political thugs and many others are hereby by declared void, vacant, and of no further force or effect because of the fact that they were done by they were done by Autopenn. In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them, but more importantly,

he did not know anything about them. The necessary pardoned documents were not explained to or approved by Biden who knew nothing about them. And the people that did may have committed a crime. Therefore, those on the Unselect Committee who destroyed and deleted all evidence obtained during their two-year witch hunt of me and many other innocent people should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level. Okay. So much wrong here. So much incorrect.

And I figured I'd bring on someone who knows more than me. And so I brought Andrew Egeron from the bulwark to help explain what this all means, the insanity of it, and the actual facts around what Trump can and cannot do. I just wanted to quickly just go through a bit of your piece here where you say that the occasional use of of Autopen for official presidential acts as a long-standing practice, even for signing legislation. Decades old Justice Department guidance states that the president, quote, need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill, but may direct an aid to affix the president's signature to a bill, for example, by Autopenn.

So that seems pretty clear cut. I mean, it wouldn't be the first time that Donald Trump said something that is just not true. this is like a long-standing practice, right? What Biden did. Yeah. So it's basically what it boils down to is that like for most things, including even legislation, kind of the longstanding practice of the government has been that, you know, the president is not limited by, you know, how fast his hand is going to get tired signing stuff.

Right. I mean, what matters is the president's will. For certain things, I mean, for laws in particular, the Constitution does require that he sign them. signing them into law is the, you know, the thing that makes them a lot, the act of signing. But what the, what the Justice Department has said since 2005 is that that is a transferable thing. The president, if he's not able to physically, you know, perform that act with his hand, his hand does not have the magic power to make it to make it so, you know, he can, he can direct an aid to do it. And the opinion in 2005 even said, even using an auto pen.

Now, the one kind of caveat here is that this, this is, this is an office of management and budget opinion. Sorry, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, it's a justice department opinion. So essentially, it's, it's describing the current practice of the federal government at that time and making a legal argument about its, you know, it's validity. But it's not something that has been, you know, this has never been like constitutionally tested before the Supreme Court. So it's, but it is a longstanding practice. I mean, President Obama has signed laws using this, using, using, using, using an auto pen. So did President Biden during his term. So the, The bigger thing.

Yeah, someone wrote to me on Blue Sky, like docu sign and Adobe. So much of it is, it's not auto pen, but it's not us physically signing either. It's just, I hate that this man just points out the stupidest shit and then we have to argue about it. But that's what's happening. But it just seems on its face idiotic. Right, right. That is kind of like one of the superpowers, right? It's like, he's just like, I'm going to do what I want.

And I'm going to come up with like the weirdest like bank shots. reason for it, and then everybody else has to, like, hunt down that bank job reason. Whereas, like, Donald Trump doesn't really care about the auto pen. Donald Trump just wants to be able to go after Donald Trump's political enemies. You're right here on the heels of that speech, today's true social alverse was a declaration of war. Can you explain that to me? Yeah, so just to talk a little bit about what Trump did on Friday, which is that he went to the Department of Justice, which is already kind of a striking thing for a president,

just given that traditionally that is seen as one of the more independent and perhaps the most independent branch of the federal government from specific political oversight by the president. The president gets to appoint his attorney general. And then it's the attorney general's job to sort administer federal law dispassionately and independently. Trump ran into a lot of problems with that in his first term because he didn't think his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, or his second attorney general, Bill Barr, kind of stuck up for him enough. And so this term, he has made a big deal out of first appointing a real yes man. And, And then a yes woman, actually, Pam Bondi, is the attorney general now where explicitly, I mean, he, he sees that role as essentially being one of his personal lawyers on behalf of the whole federal government.

And then he went to the Justice Department on Friday to basically make that case. To basically, he called himself the country's chief law enforcement officer, which is, you know, traditionally what what people call the attorney general. He, he, you know, gave a speech where he was railing against his political enemies. he was saying we're going to root out corruption throughout the federal government. He was declaring, you know, various media entities to be engaging in illegal conduct for publishing stuff he doesn't like. I mean, it was really just kind of like a shot across the bow against all his political enemies that the Justice Department is going to be his tool. At least he sure wants it to be in going after them. And then so coming right on the heels of that, we get this post on Monday where he's saying not only that.

I'm not only going to go after my political enemies in general, but I'm going to go after these specific people who, have irked me in particular and who Biden had had tried to put beyond my reach by preemptively pardoning them. And he's essentially saying, you know, I'm willing to even tear up, you know, the, what is usually considered to be a pretty universal pardon in power. I mean, it's one of the, it's one of the president's more remarkable, you know, weapons when you think about it, that he has the ability to sort of yonk anybody out of the federal, the federal law enforcement, federal trial, federal criminal apparatus and say, yes, you were convicted. Yeah, you were tried. Yeah, a jury might have put you away. But I, the president, have the power to say, for whatever reason, not anymore. And there's no

real recourse against that. And in this case, we're willing to see Trump, who has made plenty of liberal use of that power himself, essentially just dare the courts to stop him from ripping it up when it comes to people that are specifically irritating to him, like the lawmakers who tried to investigate his attempt to steal the 2020 election. Thank you so much for Andrew for coming on. And I just want to end with this that make no mistake. This is it, folks. Donald Trump is sending people to other countries without any due process.

He is arresting legal residents who have done nothing wrong other than protest. And he is now just declaring by decree, What he believes is and isn't law. This is the slide to authoritarianism that we've been warning about on this channel and that we've been talking about for a long time. This is it. It is here. All of this stuff adds up to a big problem for democracy in America. And we need to have leaders and fighters on the Democratic side who understand the gravity of the situation we're in and understand.

that we need to fight it. We cannot rubber stamp it. So I'm hoping this is a wake-up call for Democrats who are in power because Donald Trump is unhinged and he is willing to say and do anything to expand his power. I hope Democrats figure out that we need to be doing the same thing.