The sunny side of Donald Trump's power grabs

President Donald Trump is pushing the envelope of executive power with his decisions to block congressionally appropriated spending and shutter agencies and programs.

Some of the president's power grabs will turn out to be illegal or even constitutional, says Julian Zelizer .

Zelizer argues that Trump 's motive in reining in the bureaucracy is not libertarian, it's Trumpian .

He doesn't want to shrink the state, he wants to use it for his own ends, he says.

David Gergen : A chief executive with wholesale power to reorganize the federal bureaucracy is more concerning.

Gergen says it's always easier to break something than to build something; an agency that's shut down in a day is going to take a lot longer to be built back bigger.

He says the president's efforts to cut government all by himself certainly do violate the spirit of the Constitution .