For someone insisting Trump doesn't want to be a king, his Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett's threat to illegally terminate government programs they don't like sure sounds like he believes Trump has the right to act like one.

Hassett made an appearance on Fox's Saturday in America with Kayleigh McEnany this weekend, and had this to say about what would happen if the government shutdown continues into next week:

HASSETT: And you could argue that that's one reason why the Democrats are trying to shut things down, because by, you know, reducing GDP by $15 billion a week, maybe they're going to try to keep that up forever. Maybe their idea is to just not let President Trump govern, because whenever Republicans govern, good things happen, and they'll just try to stop him forever, and we worry about that.

If you look at the No King story, it's a good story. We've heard it really from moderate Democrats, that they just can't step in front of this No King's rally and open the government, but we gotta see next week what happens.

If they don't open the government next week, I really don't know how long it's gonna take, maybe the Republicans are gonna have to take extreme measures.

MCENANY: Wow, what would those extreme measures look like?

HASSETT: Well, on our side, the president has said that they're legally, if they shut the government down, then there's a... we don't have the money to do stuff, so we can stop it forever.

And we can stop virtually anything that we want other than defense and so on and national security matters. The president could pick the Democrats' favorite things and stop them forever legally. And he's yet to do that. He's yet to do that. He's hoping for an amicable solution, hoping that the Democrats open up the government maybe next week. And then if they've got a policy dispute with us on something, then that's what Congress is for.

We'll talk to them about whatever they want to talk about, and we'll see how it goes. But to shut the government down, really, uh this is the third time that they've done it since President Trump's Senate office, and so if you extract from COVID, they pretty much shut the governor down every time he’s president as much as they can. And it just shows how unpatriotic they are and how they're just ignoring their constitutional duty to be a moderating influence in America. You know, shame on Chuck Schumer for that.

MCENANY: Yeah, and all they have to do is pass a clean CR, which they did await 13 times under Biden. Kevin Hassett, thank you for joining us.

I'd love to know which programs he believes they can just unilaterally, illegally shut down that aren't going to do a whole lot of damage to Trump's base. McEnany was sure impressed with the threat, but didn't bother to ask him to elaborate, of course.