Does Anyone Care About the Constitution Anymore?

CLAY: I want to play a clip here in a moment, but I don’t believe that there’s any way that this is constitutional. We really don’t have a massive amount of history here as it comes to pandemics and what authorities mayors have and governors have and everybody else. But over a year after this emergency began and our pandemic response lost its mind (chuckles), it seems to me that one of the fallouts has been people now just make choices that they know are unconstitutional and dare judges to stop them.

That is what is going on right now with the eviction moratorium, and let’s hear what Jen Psaki said. We played this yesterday and discussed it, because Biden basically said, “Hey, I’ve talked to all the constitutional scholars. They say they can’t do it, but I’m gonna do it anyway,” and now Jen Psaki is trying to clean up the mess one more time that Joe Biden made. Here’s what she had to say about Biden’s power when it comes to eviction moratoriums.

PSAKI: Well, the president would not have supported moving forward with any action where he wasn’t — didn’t feel there was, uh, legal standing and legal support. Uhh, we obviously don’t control what the courts do. Uh, and we — we have (sputters), of course, seen what the Supreme Court, uh, decided and how they ruled. Which was not related to public health, as you well know, Kelly. It was related to the relationship between the landlord and the renter. Uh, but… uhh, this is different in that it is more targeted. Uh, it is focused on counties with higher substantial case rates, uh, uh t-to protect renters and CDC ultimately decided to — decided to adopt it.

BUCK: That is simply idiotic babble. The decision that came down which was 5-4 thanks to Kavanaugh deciding that it would be better to allow the unconstitutional action to continue because the CDC had already said it was going to end, well, now they’re just coming up with a new order. So it was, “Okay, we’ll let this go because it’s going away anyway, and it will work out better for everybody.”

This was the Kavanaugh logic to go along with the four crazy libs who of course just feel like socialism by fiat is that good thing; so they were on board for it. But now we’re finding out, “Oh, it turns out that they’ll just keep doing this.” So, Clay, this is even worse than what we’ve seen in the past.

Because at least before when Obama did something that he said he knew was unconstitutional, it hadn’t necessarily already been tested in the court, this is the Democrat Party with Joe Biden at the head of it saying straight up, “The Supreme Court says I can’t do this. So I’m just gonna do a version of it again and waits for them to try to do something about it — and by the time they get to it, it’ll be too late.” That’s tyranny.

CLAY: There’s no doubt about that. It’s also allowing — and this is big-picture analysis here. It’s allowing the CDC to effectively override property ownership. And this is significant because it’s easy in this sort of world we live in now where there’s constant demagoguery as it pertains to rich and poor and different identities.

But we talked about this yesterday, and I think it’s significant. A huge percentage of people who are landlords are not super wealthy. In fact, they have lived their entire lives to put themselves in a position. There’s a great story that I was referencing yesterday about a guy from Versailles, Kentucky — for those of you who don’t know Versailles, Kentucky, it’s an area up around Lexington.

And he owned an apartment complex, and he did all the repairs there, and he had managed it for years and years, and he paid himself $75,000 a year. Suddenly with this new situation that’s going on, not only with the eviction moratorium but, Buck, with the capital gains taxes. If he decides to sell this property… He was planning on retiring and living off of it.

He’s gonna have to go potentially… We’ll see what’s gonna happen with the budget. But right, now Joe Biden has talked about the capital gains tax going from 20% effectively to 43%, a doubling in terms of how that’s going to impact people just based on timing. They’re trying to make it retroactive.

All of this is while the economy is still trying to recover from the deep freeze that we put it in over covid. We can’t allow these agencies to be stealing away property rights. It’s unconstitutional. And it’s shameful, frankly, that Joe Biden knows it’s unconstitutional and politically he feels like he has to do it no matter what.

BUCK: Well, let’s just think about it. What’s the limiting principle here for the CDC right now? Essentially what the federal government under the Biden administration is saying is, “We think it’s better if people don’t have to leave the home they’re currently in because of the pandemic. So we’re just going to seize property,” in a sense. We’re going to take assets, take money from people.

This is a form of really thuggish Marxism at its core, and we’re gonna do this — and, by the way, I understand the Trump administration also went along with this early on. But it had not yet been tested in the court. It was earlier in what felt like a true emergency. It was a different set of circumstances. But most notably, the court had not ruled yet.

That is a different thing. We’re crossing a Rubicon here where the court, the Supreme Court can rule and the executive branch can say, “Yeah, but we really like this,” and if there’s no limiting principle, what can’t they do? Why can’t the CDC just tell everybody, “You know what?

“You’re gonna have to just give your home to the people who are currently in it, because we really can’t have the kind of social distancing we need if people are gonna be out there looking for homes to move into.” Why not? They can say whatever they want, apparently. That’s the Biden administration approach.

CLAY: They’re gonna try to argue that they’re narrowly tailoring this rule so that it isn’t implicated by the previous rulings, but I think they’re gonna fail in a big way. By the way, Val in Buffalo really quick here wants to talk about this in particular. Val, what you got for us?

CALLER: Hey, thanks for taking my call. You guys are great. Yeah, Val from New York, Long Island. What it is is that with the extension of the moratorium, I like perhaps 20 million other Americans, you know, we’re like in this boat where I had a tenant who was paying his rent and everything, and then I let them stay an extra year ’cause I wanted to sell my house.

And then because of covid they lost their jobs and they just kind of hanging in there, and I can’t even evict them and the goalposts get moved from like September to December to January to May, and now they’re being moved again. And I can’t even take any action on that.

BUCK: Do yu have to pay the mortgage, Val?

CLAY: (chuckling)

BUCK: You have to keep paying the bank, don’t you?

CALLER: Right. I’m paying the utilities, I’m paying the taxes and everything. I just want to sell the house and retire, and I can’t take any action!

CLAY: He is being held hostage by the existing policy that the CDC has put in place directly contravening his ability to own his property and make money off of it as he sees fit. And this is a flagrantly unconstitutional action that Joe Biden has undertaken, even though there’s no legal basis as he himself said yesterday.

BUCK: Wait, but, Clay, I thought Biden was gonna protect us from the crazy Marxists in the Democrat Party. I thought that was the promise that they made. Oh, no, we knew it was all a big lie and now we’re seeing it play out before us.