'Bad things': Conservative explains why Trump decision to fire 15 IGs is so 'dangerous'

27 January

On Friday night, January 24, cable news coverage in the United States was dominated by the U.S. Senate narrowly voting to confirm former Fox News host Pete Hegseth as defense secretary for the Trump Administration. The vote was a real nail biter, with Vice President JD Vance casting the deciding vote in Hegseth's favor after GOP Senators Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins joined Democrats in voting "no."

But Hegseth's confirmation wasn't the only important Donald Trump-related event that occurred that night, which also found the president firing at least 15 inspectors general from the federal government — a move that The Contrarian's Jennifer Rubin (formerly of the Washington Post) was vehemently critical of during an appearance on The New Republic's podcast.

Host Greg Sargent (one of Rubin's ex-colleagues in the Post's opinion section) described Trump's move as a "late-night massacre" that was "very likely illegal." And he got no argument from Rubin, whose podcast appearance was posted on January 27.

Rubin told Sargent, "Well, it is emblematic of many things he has done, whether it's an executive decree that attempts to repeal birthright citizenship, which is in the Constitution, or it's violating the inspector general's rule, or it's coming up with the DOGE — which is not legally constituted. He does all of these things because he thinks he can get away with it. And because he thinks, ultimately, if it ever reaches the Supreme Court, he has them in his back pocket."

The Never Trumper continued, "Now, the latter may be very true. Our current Supreme Court is corrupt, partisan; the majority, at least, is going to go along with much of what he does under the so-called unitary executive theory, meaning the president is in charge of anybody and everyone in the executive branch and no one can tell him what to do."

Rubin expects a legal response from the fired IGs, who held positions with the U.S. Defense Department, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the U.S. State Department, and other federal government agencies.

The former Washington Post columnist told Sargent, "Anyone could — any single IG or a group of IGs, there's also an IG association — go into federal court and say: This is violative of the law, we want a restraining order preventing me from being fired, allowing me to return to my office, and we'll then litigate until final conclusion…. These are the people who keep government from doing illegal, corrupt things."

Rubin added, "These are the people who stop bad things from happening to the American people. And it is very important. It is literally like taking the police off the streets and expecting the criminals to behave themselves. They won't. It's dangerous. And once they do these bad things, it's very hard sometimes to undo the damage."

Listen to The New Republic's full interview with Jennifer Rubin at this link or read a transcript here.

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