Rick Green is a Christian nationalist former Texas state legislator who, as the founder of Patriot Academy, bills himself as "America’s Constitution Coach." In addition to serving as a co-host of the “WallBuilders Live” radio program with fellow religious-right pseudo-historian David Barton and co-hosting the "At The Core" radio program on American Family Radio, Green's main focus is on serving as a "Constitution Coach"and teaching right-wing activists to understand the "original intent of our founding documents."
Given that adhering to the "original intent" of the Constitution is supposedly one of Green's core principle, one would think that he would oppose a plan by the incoming Trump administration to potentially bypass the constitutionally-mandated Senate approval process in order to install his controversial Cabinet picks via recess appointments.
While presidents have indeed used the Constitution's recess appointment provision on occasion when the Senate has adjourned in the past, the Trump administration is reportedly planning on taking the unprecedented step of forcing the Senate to adjourn over its own objections so that senators cannot reject his appointees.
While some conservatives have openly opposed this idea, Green does not appear to be among them and is, in fact, quite intrigued by it. On Tuesday's episode of the "At The Core" program, he welcomed the idea of looking "for any loophole" that could be used to "stretch" the Constitution to benefit Trump.
Green acknowledged that he has for years opposed the misuse of the recess appointment process, but suggests that his principles on the issue may have to be forsaken because "clearly we live in a different day and clearly we live at a time where we are literally in a war right now for our country's heart and soul."
"Marxism is trying to destroy this country and the people in Congress that are trying to block the president's appointments, they're on the Marxist side," Green said. "They're not the good guys."
"So I'm softening on the extraordinary measure that the president is asking for here to be able to do these recess appointments," he continued. "I would like to see a strategic, very tactical approach to this, but stay constitutional ... I'm also open to extraordinary measures here and the fact that we are at a point where the DOJ has been completely weaponized and used against the American people—completely unconstitutional—so, I don't think you break the Constitution more to fix the Constitution, but I also think you look for any loophole you possibly can where it still is constitutional, but it might be stretching a little bit."
Green said that conservatives cannot afford to be "too nitpicky" and "uptight" and concerned about "following the rules" at time when the future of the country is a stake.
"The president won a landslide election and the president should get the appointments that he wants," he insisted. "The only reason the Senate has this opportunity is to keep somebody that's a real danger to the country—a communist, something like that—from getting in. You look at the absolute clown show jack wagons that these people approved for Barack Obama and for Joe Biden. You look at these absolute nut cases that have been approved and served in the administration for the last four years and you have to say, 'OK, look, if you let those people through and you approve those people, how in the world can you object to Matt Gaetz? How in the world can you object to Pete Hegseth or Marco Rubio or any of these other guys?' And so I guess in the theater of the absurd, at this point, you gotta fight fire with fire."
Green is clearly conflicted about this issue, and understandably so because 2015, he filmed a segment for his "Constitution Alive" course on location inside Independence Hall in Philadelphia where he explicitly decried the misuse of recess appointments as an "abuse the process" by those who believe that "the ends justify the means."
"For a long time, both parties have used recess appointments and I think abused them," Green said then. "Both parties. They do it too often."
Green noted that the Constitution's recess appointment's clause was created because, in the late 1700s, Congress was frequently out of session and its members away from office for months at a time. In such cases, it was imperative that the president have the power to temporarily fill important vacancies that might occur during those prolonged absences without waiting for Senate approval.
The Senate being adjourned for months on end is no longer an issue these days, but presidents have nevertheless taken advantage of short congressional recesses to install appointees they otherwise could not get confirmed.
That, Green said in 2015, was wrong.
"That's not what [the Founding Fathers] had in mind for a recess appointment," Green proclaimed. "It was designed to take care of an emergency situation, not to sneak through an appointment that you couldn't actually get the advice and consent of from the Senate. So it's a real problem. Again, [it's] abused by both sides. Even if a guy or gal is president, somebody that you supported and you like is in the White House and you like the appointment that's languishing in the Senate, you should still be willing to say, 'I don't support that recess appointment because it violates the process.' The process has got to again become important to us. It's not good for us to abuse the process, just because we're getting the end that we want. The end does not justify the means. That's not the right way to play this game and govern a country."
