Mona Charen: A Moment of Truth
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Hello and welcome to the Bored Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We have an insane week ahead of us. The confirmation hearing of RFK Jr. is happening as I speak. Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard's hearings are set for tomorrow. This pod will be on the normal schedule, but we're doing some special programming to accommodate all the madness. So mark this stuff down. Tonight at 8 p.m., The Next Level is live for Bulwark Plus members, so keep an eye out for that link. It will be in the podcast feed for everybody on Thursday morning. And then Thursday, we're live on YouTube basically all day. Will and Sam in the morning, little Mona, cameo jvl and i in the afternoon at the end of all the hearings we'll have a wrap-up with the whole gang for bulwark plus members only you can join at the bulwark.com subscribe if you join you also get this pod ad free and you get a special secret podcast called just between us hosted by our next guest policy editor at the bulwark my friend mona charon hey mona welcome back to the pod great times isn't it yeah
It's a golden age.
The only thing that makes it bearable is that we have each other.
That's true. I'm happy to have you. I guess this is an announcement for a couple of listeners who noticed the meowing on yesterday's podcast. I have a cat, too. So we have each other a cat. Many listeners have been upbraiding me for listening to the cat food advertisement where I say we have a neighborhood cat where we feed. And they're like, that's your cat now. You have to take it in. And while I was snowed out in New York, my family took it in without me. So, you know, we have each other and a stray cat. So that's what we got.
There is something in the bulwark water because JVL also got a cat like in the last few weeks.
So I know a stray as well. I don't know. You know, we're just, we can't help the people. So maybe we're going to help the feline community. All right. You've got a new pod. I do. Mona Charon show. I've had a couple of episodes now. So I want to give you a chance to talk about that, what the goal is, and then we'll get into the parade of horror. Yeah.
So the podcast is, I mean, I was reluctant to part with Beg to Differ, which I loved doing. We did that for five years, my great colleagues. That's crazy. It was five years? It was five years. Amazing, right? I know. I know. We've been living in this reality for such a long time. But anyway, so, but I felt like with the, with the election and the new era that we're living in, I felt a strong desire to have a podcast where I can go deeper on some of these issues and, and talk to the experts and, and devote one podcast per subject matter, or at least per guest and let the guest have a little bit more opportunity. So yeah, so far we've had two and I think it's, it's going well.
The most recent one, which I was listening to, is Steve Vladek. It was interesting because he got into the legal questions of it all. There's just so much happening right now. We had the article this morning in the Bullard from Don Kettle. There's just this high-speed power grab. It's hard to keep track of everything. Part of that is because a lot of the stuff is going to get challenged. What were your main takeaways from that conversation with Steve?
I thought it would be useful to just go into, like, what is the source of the president's authority? He has authority under Article 2 as commander in chief, for example, and he's supposed to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, which is actually a limitation on his power. rather than an elaboration of it. But he also has power through legislation. And unfortunately, as Steve and I talked about, the Congress has been shoveling power out the door now for decades. They have been creating agencies, creating laws that give all of the discretion about how things should be done to executive agencies. Okay, so that is a huge problem because if you get an irresponsible president, he has already been given vast discretion.
So, for example, on tariffs, all he has to do is say, well, it's a national emergency or it's a matter of national security, and therefore I have to impose steel tariffs on Canada. Like, you know, that dangerous country to our north, our severe enemy. With their beady little eyes. Exactly. So there's that. There's the fact that they have given him all of this power.
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