CBS Sunday Morning Desperately Tries to Make ‘Constitutional Crisis’ a Thing

Jorge Bonilla
February 23rd, 2025 2:53 PM

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CBS Senior Political Correspondent Robert Costs is doing his level best to preserve the media’s hysterical denunciations of a “constitutional crisis” where there is none. This contrasts with a very recent past constitutional crisis that the media bit their collective tongues on.

Watch as CBS Sunday Morning teases their report on President Donald Trump’s exercise of presidential power by suggesting it is some new arrogation of power and potential constitutional crisis:

JANE PAULEY: Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley and this is Sunday Morning. It's been a dizzying 34 days since President Donald Trump took office. In that time The White House has issued a blizzard of executive orders, some of which have been blocked at least temporarily by court actions across the country. Which raises the question in our federal system of checks and balances: what would happen if a president simply ignores the voice of the judicial branch? We've asked our Robert Costa to explore the implications of testing the limits of presidential power. 

ROBERT COSTA: Many American presidents have faced reckonings over their power, including President Trump. But where are the lines drawn? 

What is a constitutional crisis?

JEFFREY ROSEN: A constitutional crisis is if the president refuses to carry out authoritative opinion of the Supreme Court. It's never happened before in American history.

Is it often the case that a story gets blown up at its tease? Because presidents have defied the Supreme Court as recently as President Joe Biden, who bragged about disregarding the Court on his various student loan payoff schemes:

JOE BIDEN: Look. Early in my term I announced a major plan to provide millions of working families with debt relief for their college student debt. Tens of millions of people in debt were literally about to be canceled. Their debts. But my MAGA Republican friends in the Congress, elected officials and special interests stepped in and sued us. And the Supreme Court blocked it. But that didn’t stop me. I announced we’re going to pursue alternative paths for student debt relief as- for as many borrowers as possible.      

Biden ignored an opinion of the Supreme court of The United States, but this somehow didn’t trigger any media caterwauling about a constitutional crisis, or any other such “inquiries”. Conveniently, both Biden shoe-polisher Bob Costa and Democrat apparat Jeffrey Rosen, cited here as a “nonpartisan”, both ignore Biden’s contempt for the Supreme Court.

This report leaves viewers to infer that Donald Trump’s exercise of presidential power is a constitutional crisis unto itself. Watch these spaces as the term gets stretched out. Soon enough, Supreme Court ratification of Trump’s executive orders will be spun as a constitutional crisis: 

Increasingly, it seems that the constitutional crisis is little more than the left being in crisis over Trump wielding the constitutional powers. CBS could've saved themselves some heartburn by just listening to Jan Crawford.

Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on CBS Sunday Morning on February 23rd, 2025:

JANE PAULEY: With judges across the country pushing back against some of the Trump administration's flurry of executive orders, there are those who ask: What would happen if The White House defies the courts and simply moves ahead with its plans? We've asked our Robert Costa to make some inquiries.

ROGER MUDD: Despite his powers as chief executive, his future is really in the hands of the other two branches of government. The courts and the Congress.

ROBERT COSTA: More than a half century ago, as the Watergate saga unfolded, President Richard Nixon had a standoff with the Justice Department and the courts.

DAN RATHER: In breathtaking succession tonight, the following historic events occurred. The President of the United States demanded that the Attorney General fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. The Attorney General refused, and resigned.

COSTA: The tensions brought a certain phrase to the fore of the American conversation.

JOHN CHANCELLOR: The country in the midst of what may be the most serious constitutional crisis in its history. 

COSTA: Now that term, constitutional crisis, is back.

JULIAN CASTRO: We’re headed towards a constitutional crisis.

ELISSA SLOTKIN: We’re fast barreling towards a constitutional crisis.

COSTA: Many Democrats are sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump's use of executive power.

SEAN CASTEN: The actions that Musk and his I.T. goons have taken, they’re illegal.

COSTA: And some fear that Trump, who has shattered norms and who worked relentlessly to try to overturn the 2020 election, cannot be counted on to follow the courts.

MIKE JOHNSON: I have been asked so many times, aren't you uncomfortable with this? No. I’m not.

COSTA: Most Republicans are shrugging off talk of a crisis. In fact, many are cheering as Trump overhauls the Justice Department and FBI, works with Elon Musk to fire thousands of federal employees, and signs piles of executive orders.

DONALD TRUMP: Oohhh, that's a big one.

COSTA: Making sense of this moment is tricky, but looking to history can be a good place to start.

JEFFREY ROSEN: You cannot talk about the Constitution enough…

COSTA: Jeffrey Rosen runs the nonpartisan National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. 

What is a constitutional crisis?

JEFFREY ROSEN: If the president refuses to carry out an authoritative opinion of the Supreme Court. It's never happened before in American history. Andrew Jackson threatened to ignore the Court but he didn't. No president has ever defied the Court. So far, President Trump hasn't, either.

COSTA: The Supreme Court has never been defied?

ROSEN: You haven't had an authoritative order a president has refused to carry out.

COSTA: These days, Trump's attorneys are busy appealing lower court decisions that have tried to rein him in. Those cases could soon reach the Supreme Court. 

Do you see President Trump deliberately testing the bounds of executive power?

GILLIAN METZGER: I think he is.

COSTA: Gillian Metzger, a constitutional law professor at New York's Columbia University, is keeping watch. She worked at the Justice Department in the Biden administration, and clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 

As you see it, where are the guardrails around President Trump and his use of power?

METZGER: There are some guardrails. There is the courts.

COSTA: Are they holding?

METZGER: So far the courts are holding. This is early days. I mean, we’ve had a whole lot of legal action.

COSTA: Hard to keep track of everything.

METZGER: It’s very hard to keep track of everything. But we have a lot of interventions early on by courts. There is only so much the courts ultimately can do. If you have an administration that is intent on violating the law, it’s going to take- not just the courts, it’s going to take Congress, it’s going to take the states, it's going to take the people standing up and making it clear they are not going to stand for that for our constitutional order to be preserved.

COSTA: For the time being, the Republican-controlled Congress is doing little, if anything, to contest Trump. Democrats have expressed outrage. Most Republicans range from muted to thrilled.

TRUMP: Number one trending.

COSTA: Trump has also unsettled his critics by leaning into the idea that he has immense power, even posting a fake magazine cover where he donned a crown. On social media, he has quoted this line from a film about the French emperor Napoleon.

ROD STEIGER (AS NAPOLEON BONAPARTE): He who saves a nation violates no law.

COSTA: What does it say to you when a president puts that out there?

METZGER: Truthfully, I really don't know what to make of some of the stuff on social media from Trump or from Musk or others. It seems to be aiming for some kind of shock value.

COSTA: Don McGahn, who was White House counsel in Trump's first term, says he sees a president who is generating headlines, not a crisis. 

Do you believe he is testing the bounds of executive power or not?

DON McGAHN: I think he can make that argument. He certainly is doing it in a way that is very open, very transparent, very in your face. Doesn't seem to be a lot of secret memos telling people what to do. It seems that he is certainly doing it wide open in a way that lets people see. I think he certainly is pushing the envelope and doing it in a way where I think he has much more solid legal authority to do so than I think a lot of people realize.

COSTA: What’s your message to Americans who are feeling whiplash with everything that's happening?

McGAHN: Calm down. That's my message. Calm down. It's a process. It's a lot of paper. It's a lot of executive orders. It's a lot of hype. There is a process in place. People are going to go to court. Courts will sort it out. Congress can help sort it out. We will see what comes out in the end. But this is how our system works.

COSTA: This crossroads on presidential power has been years in the making, with conservatives long calling for an empowered executive.

McGAHN: And you do have courts now which have a very heavy Trump stamp on them.

COSTA: Don McGahn was a key attorney behind Trump's nominations to the high Court, which last year ruled presidents have broad immunity. 

What is the significance of the presidential immunity ruling when it comes to president Trump today?

McGAHN: Well, I think it reflects what really already been the law. Now, there are some scholars and law professors that disagree with that. But I think, really, the president gets to be president and when he makes decisions within his constitutional or statutory authority, that's it.

COSTA: But what if the courts tell Trump to hold up, and he doesn't?

McGAHN: If the president starts ignoring court orders, that gets into some odd situations. Hasn't done that. He says he’s not going to do that.

COSTA: Do you believe him?

McGAHN: I do.

COSTA: In a statement, The White House said President Trump is following the constitution to a "T." In the end, for Jeffrey Rosen, history and the Constitution remain the guidebooks for our turbulent times, especially as this president is on the brink of making history of his own. 

Where does President Trump fit in the context of presidential power?

ROSEN: President Trump is asserting a robust form of presidential power that's as strong as any president in history. It's called the unitary executive theory, and the basic idea is that Congress can't constrain the president's power. Now, the Supreme Court hasn't weighed in on the extent of this unitary executive theory. But if the Court agrees with President Trump as it could, then he will in fact wage executive power more robust than any president in history.

 

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