On MSNBC, Angelo Carusone discusses Project 2025: “Project 2025 is alive. It's just this one part of it. They're saying, you know, job done.”

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  • Angelo Carusone: “Project 2025 is alive. It's just this one part of it. They're saying, you know, job done.”

    From the August 3, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Ayman  

    SAM STEIN (GUEST HOST): This week, we saw a glimmer of what could very well be the beginning of the end for Project 2025. Paul Danz, the Heritage Foundation official leading this effort, announced that he's resigning from his post.

    This comes as the group is also winding down its policy work after sustained criticism by Donald Trump and his campaign. For weeks, Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 — appearing to recognize that its policies are unpopular with the majority of Americans. But despite these failed efforts, Trump can't deny that his own former officials, at least 140 of them, have been deeply involved with this conservative agenda. Now one of those former officials is a guy named Paul Dans — himself who served as a top official at Trump's Office of Personnel Management. Dans' journey there wasn't a straight line.

    As ProPublica reports, he appears to have taken a full turn to the right in law school where he joined the Federalist Society. And after graduation, he became a part of the world of young emerging New York corporate lawyers in the late nineties, standing out as much more conservative than his peers. And even back then, he admired Donald Trump for bringing a quote, can-do spirit back. Now fast forward to the 2016 primary and Dans attended a dinner for the steering committee for the New York City Lawyers chapter of the Federalist Society, where again, we see that he stood out from the rest of his conservative peers by saying what no one else really was saying at the time, that he liked Trump as a candidate for president, that he was going to win. Well, Trump won, and Dans found his way into his administration.

    He first joined the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2019, and it wasn't long before he gained more power. After being appointed as a White House liaison in the Office of Personnel Management in 2020, he ordered the removal of the agency's chief of staff, seemingly ousted the director, and was then himself named chief of staff later that year. At the same time that Dans was working up the ranks, Trump signed an executive order in October 2020, creating Schedule F, a provision that strips job protections from federal government workers, and it makes them more easy to fire. Now, Schedule F is one of the key proposals of Project 2025, and under Dans' leadership, the project had already assembled a database of more than 10,000 names of job candidates vetted for loyalty to Trump's cause. Those individuals will be ready to be deployed into federal agencies should Trump win the White House come November.

    Now, Trump and his campaign, they've tried to backpedal from their connections to Project 2025, and its conservative manifesto. But the reality is pretty clear. Trump is backing and has backed the very proposals that make up the framework for Project 2025. And Trump's own self-proclaimed official platform, what's known as Agenda 47, it contains similar proposals to Project 2025. That includes a ten-point plan to, quote, dismantle the deep state and return power to the American people.

    ...

    STEIN: Joining me now to discuss Project 2025 and more is ProPublica reporter Alec Macgillis. He authored the piece that I just discussed titled The Man Behind Project 2025's Most Radical Plans. Also with us is Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, and Michelle Goldberg, MSNBC political analyst and columnist at The New York Times.

    Alec, I gotta start with you because the piece was I mean, honestly, it was incredible reporting. It was during a meeting of the Heritage Foundation leaders back in January 2023, where they decided that a second Trump administration would need to be fully staffed with loyalists, something they viewed as a failure of Trump's first term. So as much as Trump does try to deny it, Project 2025 was created specifically for him in his future administration, was it not?

    ALEC MACGILLIS (GUEST): Correct. There was still, of course, a chance back then that someone else might have emerged — Ron DeSantis, maybe someone else might have been the nominee. But the expectation was that it was likely gonna be Trump, and it was really geared toward addressing this major problem with the first Trump administration that you had this deep state that was so — that they saw as being so resistant to his agenda. And so the core of Project 2025 really wasn't so much the policy proposals that the Democrats have done such a good job of highlighting, but it was really the personnel.

    It was creating this new foot soldiers of people who would be both MAGA enough and also skilled enough to go into the government next time and carry out the agenda in a way that wasn't possible the first time. And I was actually able to get these sketches that Paul Dans had presented at that meeting in January 23, where he presented what he wanted this massive database to look like, how it's gonna work, and and to have all these names in there, fully vetted people, figure out which job they were gonna take, which of the 4,000 appointee jobs in government they're gonna take. And they've built that database, and that now remains even as they are saying that they're winding down their work. That work has gotten done.

    STEIN: Angelo, let's talk about, Trump's efforts to create some sort of artificial distance between himself and Project 2025.

    ...

    STEIN: Angelo, do you think, back then that he could have envisioned how much Project 2025 would backfire? And, also, relatedly, how did it become such an albatross?

    ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS): I think I would start with the second question because that's — that to me is the, you know, one of the more significant parts of this, which is that the reason we've been talking about this, the catalyst for this large national pushback, is not some savvy communications by any campaign or any operative. It was that Kevin Roberts himself, the head of the Heritage Foundation, got out there and said that the revolution would be bloodless if Democrats allow it to happen. He made it very clear that, you know, at least you sort of raised the specter of violence at a moment where everyone's tension and, you know, nerves were on edge. So a big part of what ended up happening is that he drew a lot of attention to this effort that was unfolding. And then when you start to uncover all these things, as you pointed out, you know, Trump basically teed it up back in April.

    He did not expect it to become an albatross. Obviously, they never would have imagined this thing to be some sort of, you know, PR problem, because he says all this stuff in his stump speeches. It's not like the things that Project 2025 that drew all this ire is that much different from the standard Donald Trump thing that we get. But the problem was is that as he started to get attention, Paul Dans, Kevin Roberts are going out there and essentially contradicting what Trump says. I mean, Kevin Roberts, right after this thing blew up initially, just a couple weeks ago, said, we understand that Trump is making a political move by trying to create some distance, but don't worry, we'll still full steam ahead.

    And I think that's the big part about this, is that they're shutting down the policy work, but the book's already written. That's what we're talking about. But the other three pillars, as you know, they're in place. The personnel, the training, and then this other part, which is the 180-day playbook, that is still being written. That's gonna be the thing in secret.

    That's sort of the step-by-step guide for the first 180 days in office. So Project 2025 is alive. It's just this one part of it. They're saying, you know, job done. Let's hope that this closes out and creates some distance. But it shouldn't, and it won't.

    STEIN: Yeah. The book's still written. I believe JD Vance has the foreword in it. Michelle, I wanna talk to you about a Daily Beast report, that Paul Dans was forced out, of his role by the Trump campaign, and that this was ultimately about a power struggle and who would be making the staffing decisions in a possible second Trump administration. What do you what what do you make of this? What does it say about the internal struggles surrounding Trump's campaign, or is this just a smokescreen designed to create artificial distance?

    MICHELLE GOLDBERG (MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR): I mean, on the one hand, I think the smokescreen, it's certainly true that Donald Trump has always gotten angry when he feels like people are taking credit for things or, you know, kind of using his name to further their own careers. But you know? And he has an interest in making it seem as if Project 2025 is not the blueprint for a second Trump administration. The reason that that won't fly is because, you know, as Alec said, these are the people who are going to staff a second Trump administration. The entire premise of Project 2025 was that Donald Trump was thwarted by the kind of so-called you know, he calls them the deep state. Other people called them the, quote, unquote, adults in the room, the regular Republicans who staffed his first administration. They're not gonna let that happen again. This is an effort to make sure that that doesn't happen again. And so these are the people that are going into the administration, and and the oldest cliche in Washington is that personnel is policy.

    STEIN: Right. Well, Alec, let's get on that because, you know, building a database of 10,000 Trump loyalists, I mean, takes some time, right? You have to do a lot of vetting. You have to talk to these people. But the flip side of it is you probably have gone and and looked at or examined the people that you wanna fire too. Right? So, what what would happen, in the first week, or let's say, of a second Trump term — if they do in fact go through these plans?

    MACGILLIS: So what they will do, they will reinstate this thing called Schedule F, which Trump had signed into law right before the 2020 election, and then Biden got rid of it. Trump will bring this this thing back. It basically, what it means is some fifty thousand people who are now in career jobs, that are protected — or protected from being summarily, arbitrarily fired, will get moved into a new category where it's much easier to fire them. And these are gonna be fan estimated ifty thousand people who are in jobs that are policy shaping, jobs that really, you know, have consequence. And so they're gonna be shifted into that new category, and it'll be much easier to fire them.

    The author I spoke with the author of this Schedule F policy, and he said that they won't necessarily need to fire all fifty thousand. They don't want to fire fifty thousand people because then you would be left, you know, possibly very rudderless. But they do want to send a message that people in these jobs need to start doing what the president says. Last time around, they feel like too many people, too many career employees were slow walking things, resisting things that they wish — the career people say they had to do because they are being asked to do things that were against the law, against statute. This time around, there's gonna be a signal sent that if you don't tow the line, that you're gonna be at risk of being fired in this new category.

    So they're gonna have 4,000 people installed in the political appointee jobs that they are —  are open to being nominated for. And then on top of that, they could potentially fire, you know, some thousands more and put more people into to those jobs.

    STEIN: It's radical. Angelo, what struck out to me is that, in the last week, as Trump has really come down on Project 2025, there's been some subtle pushback, anonymous mostly, against the Trump operation for doing this. Part of the reason is is that a lot of the people at Heritage who are working on Project 2025 are Trump people. They're the people who worked with Trump just like Paul Dans was, who felt like they were doing a service for the campaign and the future administration. And now feel like they're being scapegoated.

    Do you expect that we're gonna see any sort of civil strife within the Republican movement or the conservative movement, I should say, over what's happening here? Or are they all gonna just get in line basically?

    CARUSONE: I think there's gonna be more tension and pushback amongst some large parts of the right-wing media. Because the reality is that now that Trump has sort of created some more distance or the Trump campaign has created some more distance from Project 2025 or at least tried to, their messaging has gotten sharper. Now look. We know what happens when Trump really wants to attack something. Right?

    I mean, we know — we all know we all know what that sounds like. So if we — if you just think about the way that he's talking about Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation, it's very soft. So, you know, they're trying to have it both ways here, but one of the things we're already seeing from prominent right-wing radio hosts is actually criticisms of Trump. And when they really criticizing Trump, what they're actually doing is criticizing advisers. They're saying, look, you know, they're trying to hold him back.

    They're trying to create some distance. They should be leaning into this more. We shouldn't be running away from this. I think that that narrative is gonna continue to edge, and I think it's gonna happen for two reasons. One, this isn't over. They're gonna have to continue to try to create some more space between Trump and Project 2025 as evidenced by this segment and others. Like, people are gonna continue to talk about it because they haven't sort of met that bar yet. And the other part is that they kinda know that they have Trump on the edge right now. He's got a little bit of a diminished position, so everyone's in about power in this sort of places, and they don't want Trump to sort of get too mainstream or at least appear to be too mainstream.

    They want them catering to their ideas and their bases, and that's the thing to consider here is that Project 2025 was an effort of the largest one hundred right-wing operations, policy shops. It was a collaboration. So they each have their constituencies and stake in this, and they have skin in the game. So they don't want much distance or separation, and they're gonna continue to ankle bite. They'll get in line like all Republicans do, but they're gonna push.

    STEIN: Ankle bite. Michelle, I wanted to actually ask you about the flip side of this, which is, look, you're the you're the, Harris campaign. You've seen that this has become an albatross. You've seen it shockingly come up in all these focus groups, and suddenly people are aware of it and polling. And then you see Trump say, no, no, no, no, no. This isn't mine. I don't know what this is. These ideas are bad. What do you do if you're the Harris campaign on this situation?

    GOLDBERG: Well, I think that, you know, Project 2025 has become such a useful shorthand for an entire agenda. And all you have to do if you're the Harris campaign is keep pointing out how completely entwined it is with Trumpland. Right? I mean, next month, Kevin Roberts' book is gonna come out, and [JD] Vance wrote the forward. There's no walking that back. And so, you know, there — it's Stephen Miller. It's kind of everybody in Trump's orbit. And so I think they just need to keep on hammering that and not let it — and not let him create this artificial distance.

    STEIN: Alright. Alec McGillis, I gotta thank you, for both coming on here and for the incredible piece, in ProPublica. You guys should all read it. Angelo and Michelle, thank you, and stick around, please, both of you.

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