MSNBC Legal Analyst Throws Cold Water on the Democrat’s Latest Talking Point [WATCH]

MSNBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos challenged assertions that President Donald Trump’s executive orders have created a “constitutional crisis,” pushing back against claims made by liberal legal scholars and Democratic lawmakers.

On Monday, an article in The New York Times featured several legal experts arguing that Trump’s efforts to reform the federal government amounted to a constitutional breakdown, with one calling his actions “lawless.”

During an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Cevallos dismissed the characterization, cautioning against overusing the term “constitutional crisis” when referring to executive orders.

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After host Mika Brzezinski read from the NYT article and asked Cevallos for his perspective, he urged restraint in labeling Trump’s actions as a crisis.

“I think we need to be careful with the term ‘constitutional crisis’ because, as I define it, that would be a situation where the Constitution doesn’t have an answer and there is a pressing conflict,” Cevallos said.

“The flurry of executive orders, the chaos, that I think doesn’t get us to crisis yet. It is irritating for the courts. It is challenging. It could lead to a serious problem if, as you said, they become too congested with dealing with these orders.”

He added that an actual crisis would only arise if a court issued an order that the administration refused to follow, which historically has been an unresolved constitutional question.

“The crisis occurs, and we’ve already talked about it, at the moment when there is a court order and the president or the administration refuses to follow it, because historically, we don’t really have a clear answer for what to do in that situation.”

Cevallos acknowledged that the Trump administration’s approach to executive orders has been rapid and sometimes legally challenging but noted that the courts have handled similar waves of orders before.

“On the first half of it, issuing a bunch of executive orders, not only do we know that the courts can handle it, they already did this back in 2017. This is the same MO. The Trump administration then would just fire out executive orders. It felt like they weren’t even spell-checking them,” Cevallos said.

“And then they would let the courts prune them like the proverbial bonsai tree, or they would just withdraw them and go back to the drawing board. It’s probably not the most efficient way of doing it. It’s chaotic, as you said. It’s problematic.”

Several Democratic lawmakers have accused Trump and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chair Elon Musk of attempting to undermine the federal government by aggressively cutting wasteful spending and downsizing bureaucracy.

Trump’s executive orders on birthright citizenship, freezing foreign aid, and restructuring government agencies have sparked legal challenges, with multiple federal judges issuing injunctions against the administration.

The Trump administration has appealed several of these rulings, arguing that Congress and federal courts should not interfere with executive authority on matters related to immigration, foreign aid, and government efficiency reforms.

Despite claims of a constitutional crisis, the courts have historically played a role in reviewing executive actions, and Cevallos suggested that the current legal battles remain within the normal scope of governance rather than an unprecedented breakdown of the system.

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