Trump Governance to Date: A 60 Day Policy Overview
March 27, 2025
Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer
Guest: David New
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 3/27/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.
Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.
Sam Rohrer:
Hello and welcome to this Thursday edition of Stand In the Gap Today and it’s also our bimonthly emphasis on the constitution and American history and when you hear those words, you know my guest is constitutional attorney, author and public speaker David New and I’m glad that he’s back with me today as we embark upon an important area and whereas there are really many areas that we could pursue today on this emphasis, David and I in our discussion and often we, not often, but we almost always have a collaboration and the discussion about what we’re going to discuss, but we’ve chosen to pursue today a selected consideration of the Trump administration policies in these first 60 days since we’re just about at that point now, and this is not, I’ll tell you front, this will not be a comprehensive overview where we could consider the international, the geopolitical, the domestic, all of which can be broken down into many, many layers since to do that would be absolutely impossible in an hour.
The program yesterday that Leo Hohmann and I did was actually more on the international type things, but today we’re going to look at more domestic actually slices of domestic policy actions, but all things that if you’re listening and aware of the news are familiar, that’s not some hidden insignificant item in segment one. For example, we’re going to give an overall commentary and rating of really what has happened so far in these 60 days policy-wise, more domestic than not overall, and I’m going to ask David what he thinks about what the president is doing, the good and perhaps that which is not so good. In segment two, we’ll consider a judicial involvement review and in part more than this, but we’ll talk also about the controversial Alien Enemies Act that the Trump administration is using in deportation of certain illegals. In segment three, we’re going to consider aspects of the Trump team efforts to reduce the size of government and then segment four will conclude with an overview of the Trump administration policies as it relates to religion in America. So those are the four we’re going to go after. Our conversation today is going to be built around this theme, Trump governance to date a 60 day policy overview. And with that, David, welcome back to the program.
David New:
Well, it’s so nice to be with you and blessings to everyone with us now. So nice to be with you
Sam Rohrer:
David. It’s great to have you back and I know our listeners like to have you back and so do I. Let’s get right into this. Let’s talk here in this first second about a rating of the first 60 days of the Trump administration. Overall, everybody has their own idea. They’re subjective, some like everything and defend everything. Some don’t like anything and reject all and others are somewhere in the middle. I think that’s where most everybody probably is in their mind. Depends on a lot of factors, but let’s go this direction here. What overall grade would you assign and then go into it and cite the most positive policy changes or I’m going to say Trump administration initiatives from your perspective and then why?
David New:
Yes, I would assign a grade somewhere between A minus and B plus somewhere in between. There is the grade that I would give President Trump. This is a very good grade, it’s an excellent grade, but there are some problems also, which is why it’s not A or A plus first, what I like about what he’s done in the 60 plus days we’ve had, first he’s a leader. There’s no question about it. We constantly see him on tv. He is providing leadership to the American people. This is so different from the last administration where you rarely saw the president at all. We weren’t even sure who was running the government with Donald Trump, with President Trump, there is no doubt who is in command. Second thing I like about what he’s done, the country is on the move again, there’s a new spirit in the country and that’s important.
Third, he’s trying to reduce the size of government. He’s trying to bring peace to Ukraine. He’s trying to get the economy moving again, getting lots of foreign investment in the United States. He has already closed the southern border and he is going to finish the wall. These are great things that he has done, but there are some things that he does I think I could take a pass on first, I don’t like anything he says about Canada. This business of Canada becoming the 51st state is absolutely nonsense. These are our best neighbors. We have the longest undefended border in the world is between the United States and Canada and insulting these people, calling them the premier of Canada, a governor and all this. This is bad. Canadians want their sovereignty to be respected too. It is true they are a dwarf compared to us, but that doesn’t matter.
I don’t know where in the art of the deal it talks about insulting your neighbor, but whatever chapter it’s said, he needs to cut it out. This stuff about Greenland is crazy. There’s nothing he needs to do to Greenland. If he wants military, stronger military presence in Greenland, they will give it to him gladly. He doesn’t need to talk about taking it. Don’t do that. That’s dumb. His move on Panama, that is great. Right on his next thing that he’s doing is moving too fast on the tariffs. He’s taking all the countries on at one time he should be applying a divide and conquer approach. Start with Mexico, they’re the weakest. Win your tariff war with them, then move on to the next one and so forth. By doing it slowly, he reduces the risk of inflation. The third thing that he did that I don’t like is I like the idea of him firing bad federal employees, but he needs to be careful when he does it real fast and hard like that, he is going to fire some really good people that you may want to keep. There should be some sort of quick review process where each of these people can go to make the case for their job. The last thing I think he needs to end this love affair he has with Putin. This stuff has got to stop. Putin is a bad hombre. We don’t want him as a friend and he just needs to change his attitude there. But overall naturally I’m for him. I’d vote for him again if he ever runs. I don’t think he can technically as president if I read the 22nd amendment correctly.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay David, and with that, that’s a great overview and ladies and gentlemen, if you’re just turning in and right now our theme today is Trump governance to date a 60 day policy overview and that is just an overview in this last segment, my guest today constitutional attorney David New was just giving his perspective the grade a b plus. That’s what he thought. And then positive initiatives and the ones that are not so good and in his opinion are negative. I know many of that would agree with them. Stay with us. We’ll come back and we’re going to move into the area of judicial and court involvement. Well David, let’s move into the judiciary Now during the break you were asking me, well Sam, what grade would you give the present? I tell you what, I’m having a little bit of difficulty on that I would give an A on initiative and boldness, but I’m going to reserve and come back maybe later in the program for some other, because I think methodology, I’d have to break it down a little bit and that would reflect even some of what you were saying because so much change, as I’ve been saying here from actually from January, what we are guaranteed of is change and major change and that major change is causing transitions of various types to occur.
So much is so quickly and even David, you and I talking the Michelle Bachman on with me on Monday and she was making comment very, very good for everything being done and you’ve got to go quickly because they got to operate within the fact only going to be there two years effectively before the next midterm. And so whatever you’re going to do, you better do it quickly and I can understand that. But on the other hand, there is I believe a practical major, major problem in that when you have as many executive orders that have been given every one of them causing a ripple effect that affects everybody and demands tariffs and others are being made of all nations friends and enemies, that there are so many changes and transitions that are taking place all at once that it’s almost impossible to know exactly what is the response to this policy or this policy.
They’re all conflated and they’re extraordinarily difficult to manage. And I guess I’ll just say this David, the uncertainty of how things will come out I think is extremely great for a number of reasons. I may mention one of those if we get into it. So I’m just going to leave it at that. I think from a initiative and a boldness perspective, you are correct. Somebody is leading, somebody is in charge, the volume and the magnitude and the increasing threats towards leaders and nations, they either you do what we want or we’ll do something that’s creating I think a problem that we’re seeing with nations around the world. Those are my quick response. Okay, let me get into this here. Now we’ll shift to the judicial because the area of the judicial and court interaction, ladies and gentlemen by the Trump administration I think has risen to what maybe could construe us perhaps at an historic level, maybe not, but it’s pretty high up there.
For instance, since the indisputable effort during the Obama administration to stack the courts with ideological leftists, the courts have become even more than they were a battleground for policy, for creating end runs around the legislate and in some cases even to circumvent the constitution or get it or change it. An activist or weaponized court system has clearly we know plagued the first Trump administration and there’s a struggle underway giving rise I think to some accusations that now that Trump is targeting the Trump team is actually as some are saying, targeting judges and attorneys that he does not like or were part of an effort. They believe were involved in helping to politically harm him these last four years and we know a lot of that happened, but this is now there. Now even the speaker of the house has confirmed that Congress can defund the courts entirely or judges specifically giving rise to further controversy. So these are just some of the things that are after. So David, this go into this defunding by the courts because it just happened in the Speaker of the House, confirmed it this morning. Could you give just a little bit of history of that, whether or not you think in terms of removing activist judges for instance, that threatening to defund them is possible and legitimate
David New:
Removing federal judges is not a wise thing to do. It’s very difficult to impeach a federal judge. There’s been very, very few that have been impeached or removed, so it’s not going to happen defunding the courts, the Constitution does not allow you to reduce the salary of a federal judge, so they cannot do that. But I suppose they could defund their building and their courts, but I just think that’s a bad direction to go. I would stay away from it. The main thing I want to talk about permitted in this brief time we’ve got is this alien enemies act
And the press is not giving the whole story. What I want to do is read the White House proclamation that was issued on March 15th of this year where the president talks about why he is invoking this law, this 1798 law, this is what the White House said. Trend AUA is a designated foreign terrorist organization with thousands of members, many of whom have unlawfully infiltrated the United States and are conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States. TIAA operates in conjunction with the cartels and the Nicholas Duo regime. So this is the big thing that they’re not saying. President Trump is linking this group of people here as an extension of part of Venezuela’s foreign policy to damage the democratic nations in the West and particular the United States. Now why is that important? Because when you read the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, this law, it’s a good law to give a president power and it was written in 1798 but it was used in World War I by President Wilson.
It was used in World War II by FDR and by Truman. So it’s not this off the wall thing that they make it sound. 17 98, 17 98, it actually is fairly, it was used just a couple of years ago during World War ii. It was a codified in the United States Code after World War I. It’s in the United States code, so it’s good law. Now here’s the thing, when you read the Alien Enemies Act, they keep saying in the press there’s no war, no war has been declared, but when you read the first sentence, it doesn’t require a war. Let me read it to you ladies and gentlemen. Whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetuated, he doesn’t have to have a war. This is why if you notice, Trump talks and has described what’s coming from the south as an invasion.
He did this a number of times during the campaign because he was setting it up for this law to be enacted if he won the election. So it doesn’t require a war, it can be an undeclared war, it can be an undeclared invasion. Now here’s where the problem starts. The Alien Enemies Act talks about courts and it does talk about it, but it doesn’t say it the way many federal judges wish it would say. It does say that if the president makes a proclamation, which he has done that he can start removing these people from the United States lawfully. But then it says something to the effect, let me quote it, the role of the courts, let me read that to you. Once the president has issued his proclamation, courts and judges in the courts are authorized and it shall be their duty upon complaint against any alien enemy resident to cause such alien to be duly apprehended and conveyed before such court judge or justice. And after a full examination and hearing on such complaint and sufficient cause appearing to exist to order such an alien to be removed out of the territory of the United States. That is what the federal district judges are using to say he can’t move them without a judicial hearing. But notice it does not talk about two process of law.
When the Congress wrote this law in 1798 and repeated it verbatim in the United States Code, they did not put due process of law of the Fifth Amendment, which is what applies. It says No person shall be denied due process, life, liberty of property without due process of law. What is due process of law. It means there has to be a fair trial or a hearing of some kind. Here this is very light. Now the President has used the word vetted. He might be able to build a legal case that he has been doing. What he has been doing is constitutional because he did conduct, he did vet these people, review them. David, David, David
Sam Rohrer:
Just hold that because we’re out of time. I want to come back and I’m just going to ask you straight up and straight down, is it appropriate for the President to be seeking deportation under the Aliens Enemy Act? Yes or no? When you come back, officer ask you that question. Ladies and gentlemen, stay with us. We’ll be back. We’ll conclude that question I just posed and then we’ll move into the area of size of government reducing the size of government. Okay David, we’re going to go into looking at the initiatives of the Trump administration into the area of reducing the size of government. But let’s go back, as I said, I was going to ask you in the Alien Act, which the president has been said, the Alien Enemies Act, which he is citing and you just went through that to support the deportation and right now, believe it or not, it’s with folks going to El Salvador. Even in this group are members of those of MS 13. They are bad actors as you’re talking about. So alright, so here is the question I was going to say. So in your opinion is the Trump administration’s citation of the Alien Enemies Act as a legal constitutional proper basis for the deportation of at least some in this category like MS 13, is it legitimate or is it not?
David New:
In my opinion, it is legitimate providing when the president says he has vetted his people have vetted these people, that means that all these people that they’re moving, there’s an issue right now that one of these people that has been sent to El Salvador’s prison is completely innocent. If they were vetted and they had an opportunity to present evidence in their favor that they’re not what they’re accused of, if that existed then he has complied with the law and it’s okay. So we won’t know until this goes to the US Supreme Court, what the final answer is going to be.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay,
David New:
I’m for it.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay. What’s interesting because whereas you did not say it, I’m going to say it and make a connection without the provision, the safety part of it, of vetting, which was in the law, the vetting in order to make sure that harm is not brought to somebody under a wrong position. You’re saying as well, even in the elimination of positions of people in employees of the federal government, that a blanket let’s get rid of everybody is not nearly as good as saying, wait a minute, we don’t want to throw out the baby with the bath water, so to speak. It’s the idea that big actions cause big things to take place, but you catch up potentially some innocent in the middle. So I’m just going to suggest that you can comment more on that as we walk into this next segment because it is dealing with the downsizing of government, one of, without a doubt the President and with Musk and the Doge effort and all of that. Obviously what we’re talking about, there is a great effort to take in downsize government both in terms of people money, who knows how much other things, but that’s involved in it. So it would be my question to you that aspect, reducing the size of the federal government rings positive with most all conservatives and constitutionalists. So here’s the question. Why in a general way is that a good thing? You support it. Why?
David New:
We definitely want smaller government. We want to reduce the size of government. George Washington gave one of the best quotes, one of his best quotes about government is when he said government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force like fire. It is a dangerous servant and a fearful master that tells you the attitude of those who wrote the constitution, what they thought of government. Government can serve. But the government also is a threat at all times. And when government really takes off and becomes a threat to the people is when it gets bigger, there is an inverse relationship between government and freedom of the people. The bigger the government, the less freedom the people have. You want to have the people have a lot of freedom, then you want to have less government. It’s that simple. That is the model.
Sam Rohrer:
Alright, and that is a good model. Sorry, let’s just walk just a bit further into here. We’ve got time here to take a couple minutes from your perspective, your study, what is the basis, what is the justification for a small government, small federal government? It’s got to go beyond just the fact of the amount of money that’s spent, but give me a couple of reasons from your mind that small federal government is the best.
David New:
If the government gets large and it always has a tendency to want to grow and become bigger and bigger and bigger. That’s just the nature of government. What happens is we the people slowly becomes we the government and that’s bad. That’s bad. And this is one of the reasons why secularism is a very serious threat to our freedom and liberty. The United States was not intended to be a secular state. The concept of secularism in a secular state didn’t even exist when the constitution was written. But these people who are secularists, they believe the federal government is the solution to all our problems. So what they do is they replace paper power with government power, which is the exact opposite of what the framers believed in. So the more secular America becomes, this is where we’re heading for trouble because they’re becoming less believers. Although some of the recent statistics suggest that the move away from religion has stopped and has been reversed a little bit.
But the more secular America becomes, the more government we get and the less power we have. There is another reason why government is the problem is a big problem. When you have people dependent upon the government for everything that they need. Think of it this way. Right now, almost half of your life you’re working for the government by taxes. When you count federal, state, local taxes and all the taxes that you buy in a gasoline, all the taxes that go into food, almost half your life right now is for government, not for yourself. When government gets so big where everybody becomes dependent upon the government, what that does is it breaks down the bond between one human being and another one of the reasons that there is a high murder rate in this country is because people don’t look upon the other guy the same way we should, the same way we see ourselves. We don’t look at the other guy as a person. Why? Because I’m not connected to him. Government is getting in the way, the government is providing everything that somebody else in the community like Christian charity should provide and that’s why government is bad. It breaks down the bond of one human being to another.
Sam Rohrer:
David, I think that is excellent and if I could, I’m going to add in a couple of my thoughts ladies and gentlemen to that is that if somebody were to come to ask you, if you’re listening to me right now and ask you why should government be small or put it this way, what is the purpose of government? What would you say? I think therein is for me the core Romans 13 and then in one Peter two 14, it gives the purpose of government from God’s perspective, you could put it out in one phrase to uphold justice. That’s what you could put. Praise those who do well, punish those who do evil. Those are the two functions biblically of governmental authority. The result of that is when that is its function, then in fact you protect those who do what is right. And that’s why you have police officers and that’s why you have a court system that implements and used to have the 10 commandments hanging on the wall so that justice would be defined as God would do it.
And the judge that was there actually carried it out like God said to do it. And the evil doer would be punished appropriately according to justice. That was the function of government. But then you protect those who uphold the law, those who do. And that includes government protecting the God-given right of parents to raise their children. That’s why there’s no education department in the federal government. That’s why it can’t be there. It allows the church to function as the church government protects the church to do what God says the church should do. That’s limited. See, when that happens then you don’t have an education department, you don’t have a welfare department because the church is doing that job, not the government. You have a military. Yeah, because that’s protection. You have those functions of a good judiciary that does not get involved in activism but does actually uphold the law and carries it out.
See what I mean? So David, that’s why I come back with you on that and say that’s where I would go. And therefore when government gets involved, ladies and gentlemen, in doing anything that’s beyond the scope of those two things and they spend money as in USAID or whatever, what’s the problem with that? Well, it’s not legitimate. Number one under our own republic, it’s not constitutional, it’s not our purpose. And number three, how does government get that money to do it? Hand it out. They got to steal it from the people. Why is it stealing? Well, because it’s not a function that God said. Now you find the real issue of what Doge is uncovering. It’s a humanistic worldview that’s taken over that David you were just talking about. And it’s amazing how everything keeps coming back to worldview. When we come back, we’re going to then move to the area of religion, the Trump administration’s recognition involvement in religion.
David, as we go into the final segment, ladies and gentlemen, let me just thank you again for being on board with us today. Always, always a pleasure to have you with us and that’s a great thing. And I say it, I will say it again. It’s really good to hear from you. Often when I’m out and about, people will come up and then offer comments and that’s wonderful. It would be great to actually sit down and just take a minute or two or get your phone out and you can communicate to us by our app or on our website. Just let us know for instance, where are you’re listening. For instance, where are you right now? Are you in your car? Some of you, are you at home in your kitchen? That could be some who live different parts of the country. Pick up this program later at night.
Some I know because they’ve mentioned it are actually going to bed when they hear it in their time zone. Are listeners in Africa, the nation of Kenyan, beyond. They’ll actually hear this program tomorrow because of the fact that they’re ahead of us in time. But it’s good to know where you are and really how God is using it to encourage you in your walk with the Lord in your understanding. And again, a wonderful thing and partner with us in prayer. I ask you to do that. So very, very important and to consider also to participate with us financially. I know things are getting tighter out there. They really are for everyone. A lot of giving is down for nonprofit groups all over the country. A lot of churches, what people are giving are down ought not to be in a matter of our tithe. That’s important.
That’s first. But if God is using this program, really consider to participate with us in giving. And again, you can do that on the app or on the website. So anyways, please consider doing that. Okay, David, on the program here, we’ve covered before the definition of and the importance of religion in America. It’s an historic fact from our very founding religion as it was often referred to, it’s even in the constitution, it’s religion. Religion was commonly understood to be the Christian faith, the Christian religion. It wasn’t just any kind of religion and it was foundational and aspects constructing. Leading up to the basis for our representative republic, even the content of our constitution, our separation of powers, concept, definition of justice and morality and the purpose of government that I talked about in the last segment. That all comes right off of a biblical world of view concept. So if you don’t mind here, before you give some comments on the Trump perspective of religion, take just a minute or two and define and illustrate from your perspective the importance of religion. The Christian religion in America’s founding and history that has brought us to this point.
David New:
President Trump has a very positive attitude towards religion in the United States. I want to read Article four, section four says that the United States shall guarantee that every state shall have a Republican form of government. That means by law no state will be allowed to be a monarchy by law. No state will be allowed to be a dictatorship by law, no state will be allowed to be a theocracy. Now the United States is a theistic state, but it is not a theocracy. There is a big difference. It is true they both alike in that they believe the government is submissive to the sovereignty of God, but they in differ in a very important respect. In a theocracy, the clergy run the government in a theistic state like our national motto in God we trust. That’s a theistic statement. In a theistic state, we the people run the government.
That’s the difference between a theocracy and a theistic state. I want to read a definition to you from the dictionary, Merriam Webster’s dictionary. It says A government in which the supreme power is invested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation. You usually involving periodically held free elections. Now, you might think that that was the definition of a republic. What I just read to you from the Merriam Webster dictionary collegiate dictionary is the definition of democracy. At the time of the constitution, they did not want a democracy because the democracy ran to mob ocracy. But the word democracy, like all words and language is dynamic and it changes over time. So in our era, republican democracy are very, very much close. Now here’s the thing. This is where it’s important right now. The American people have lost the knowledge of the relationship between democracy and Christianity.
They don’t believe there’s any link between them at all. None in the 18th and 19th century of America, it was the exact opposite. The American people included. The United States government believed that democracy to work required Christianity as an essential element of it, which is why when the United States promoted democracy in the world, guess what? They included the US State Department, Christianity. Let me read to you a quote from FDR when he was running for reelection and he was up against Hitler and the Soviet Union. This is what is said in 1940. This is November 1st, 1940 in Brooklyn, New York. Look what FDR said about the relationship between democracy and Christianity.
Those forces, the Hitler and the Soviet Union, those forces hate democracy and Christianity as two phases of the same civilization. They oppose democracy because it is Christian. They oppose Christianity because it preaches democracy. That is how the world used to view in this country their relationship. And that’s why the United States government did everything they possibly could do to help foreign missionaries. Foreign missionaries were the weapon that was used by the federal government to promote democracy in the world. Because wherever Christianity goes, freedom prevails. So anyway, I wanted to share that and I think Trump is right. We need to get back to that ancient knowledge that there is an important relationship between the two, which secularists have lied and said there’s none. Thank you.
Sam Rohrer:
And David, that is extraordinarily well said. Now bring us right up to close here. And ladies and gentlemen, just as thought as we close, David said the fact that we have gone to the point where there are so few who understand the relationship between Christianity and the way we commonly use democracy today, a representative government, that linkage is the linkage that we talk about on this program, a biblical world view. Understanding what God says is critically important for how we approach and understand all of the things that we talked about on the program today, whether it be the court and judiciary or justice or government and the purpose or the size of it or the church and its role. All of the things we talked about, all directly related to how we understand a biblical worldview. David New, thank you so much again, another great program. Lots of good information and thoughts as presented. And ladies and gentlemen, again, thank you for being with us today. Stay with us tomorrow. Join Isaac Crockett and I as we’ll talk about a little bit of the summary of the whole week here.
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