On MSNBC's Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone discusses how listeners are calling into Sean Hannity's radio show to plead for help
Carusone: “Even those callers are sort of bewildered. In fact, they're appealing to Hannity, in particular, to say, look, we're on your side, but please explain to them that it's too much recklessness”
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From the February 25, 2025, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): The opposition on the outside of government to Elon Musk is growing louder by the hour. Elon Musk is, of course, slashing our federal government, proudly wielding a chainsaw. The South African immigrant whose brazen cost-cutting has so far resulted in thousands of federal workers being fired or put on leave, and the brutality of those firings has been the point. But as more and more slashing continues, Americans are voicing their disapproval loudly. Even some Republicans in Congress are now pushing back against Elon Musk. And now, new reporting in the New York Times shows there’s resistance to Elon Musk within the Trump administration, within Trump's cabinet, to the efforts by his unelected co-president.
Elon Musk over the weekend sent an email to more than 2 million federal workers demanding that every one of them justify their roles and their jobs. He threatened them with firing if they did not respond to his email. The New York Times reports what follows, quote, “By Monday, just 48 hours after an email from Musk with the subject line, quote, ‘What did you do last week?’ landed in the email boxes of millions of federal workers, personnel officials proclaimed the ‘request’ to be voluntary even as Musk renewed his demand. For the first time since the beginning of Trump's return to power, government employees appeared to be fending off, at least for now, an ambush in their war with the world's richest man. After Musk's email, several agencies quickly sent out emails telling their employees they did not need to provide the five bullet points about their activity that he wanted.”
Remarkable display of pushback to Elon Musk's overreach, as a new, stunning resignation letter shows that even those working inside Musk's pet project have had enough of Musk. From a letter of 21 civil service employees, quote, “We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans' sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services. We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions.” These employees were originally part of what was once known as the United States Digital Service. It's an office established during President Barack Obama's administration. More from their letter, quote, “We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations. However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
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WALLACE: I mean, Angelo, I wanted to send all them copies of Project 2025, because if they read a page of it, they would’ve known that this was the plan. And the plan on no page has an ounce of humanity. And to your point, to your warnings, you've been sharing on this show for a year, the lack of humanity and the brutality is the plan.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS): Yeah, it is. I mean, and you know, when I said – I'm usually not so much fun in social gatherings these days – but what I constantly remind people is that, you know, we're only through the first portion of Project 2025. Wait ‘til we get to the part where, literally, they would call for mass slaughtering of our herds of wild horses in the country. I mean, the entire document is riddled with needless cruelty that is designed to either enrich a few, transform our culture, and transform our country. And we shouldn't sort of discount the significance of that.
And that's where, you know, it was wildly unpopular for a reason, because every time somebody learned something about it, they would say, well, wait a minute, that would affect me. And the thing that I remind, especially, you know, fellow liberals these days is, it's okay to be selfish. In fact, I encourage people to. I encourage them to look at their plans, because they're very transparent about what they're planning on doing and what they intend on doing, and finding the thing that's going to affect you and your loved ones the most, because they're going to execute and implement it.
And to Tim's point earlier, it's not going to be appeals to, you know, their better natures or to consideration or kindness that is going to prevent them from implementing Project 2025. It is actually going to be the sort of the raw political power pressed on the very slim margin that they have. And this is where David's reporting comes in, because a lot of what they're doing and what gets lost is that, when they put out those false stats – you know, DOGE is sort of like an accelerant. It's sort of grease in the Project 2025 machine. But it's not – it is not a vision for how they transform things, it is just a mechanism by which they help deliver it. But when you put out these stats, what we have to recognize is that, even though they can disappear it from their website, the report about, for instance, that there were millions of dead people receiving Social Security checks, that was repeated 43 times in a single day on Fox News. You know, there are other claims that they put out there, like the idea that it's saved $55 billion – again, totally debunked – Fox repeated that 87 times in less than a week. They did multiple segments about it.
So, that's where the accelerant comes in. What that provides is, not just them to do it at the government level, then they put out these stats that make their way through the right-wing media echo chamber. And that sort of helps be a little bit of a bulwark and a stopgap against the political pressure that – to build the political pressure needed to overcome that sort of coefficient of friction of cruelty that they have. We’ll get there.
WALLACE: I'm not going to let this slide. They plan to slaughter the wild horses in the West? I love those wild horses. What's that? I didn't get to that page.
CARUSONE: Oh yeah. Yeah, it's totally in there. And it is a thing that they are absolutely committed to doing. It is very explicit. It is part of this larger push of sort of, not just deregulation, but they actually frame it as an act of kindness. Because a lot of – it requires a lot of, you know, some investment to, you know, maintain them. It's part of this big push for conservation. In fact, there's Republicans that really helped drive this through decades ago that this is a new model of conservation, but it'll cost a little bit of money and thought. And part of their rollback is to say, yeah, let's just – it's much easier to humanely dispose of them, as Project 2025 describes it, which is slaughter.
WALLACE: Oh my god. I want to ask you something else, Angelo. I mean, we've talked so much about the information silos. And when you listen to the sound of the voters, Republican voters, and I think one of the first ones I saw was the one in Georgia of Congressman McCormick. Rich McCormick, who’s now urging the Trump administration and Elon Musk to take more caution after being booed and really roasted in his very red district.
It says something interesting about information, right? It's not – it may be a little more nuanced than not knowing what's happening, it's maybe not trusting some of the messengers. But it feels like what Trump is doing is so out of step with what even MAGA Republicans thought they were getting, that the accomplices and the enablers are getting Tea Party-caliber rage from Republicans.
CARUSONE: Yeah, I'm actually really glad you said that, because there is this disconnect between what's happening online in terms of the distribution and the narratives, and even sort of like the centers of gravity, like Fox News. And then what's happening – and I'm going to – can’t believe I'm saying this – but if you want to know what they really think, you have to listen to talk radio. Because if you listen to right-wing talk radio, the callers are calling in. And their, you know, regular audience is saying, wait, I'm all for DOGE, I'm all for all these cuts, but my friend, my cousin, my neighbor, I'm a veteran, and I just got indiscriminately fired. Or, no, no, no, no, they shouldn't be cutting the Bureau of Land Management people in my area. We're actually really needed here. This is part of our community and our country. They're not lazy workers. They work really hard.
If you listen to the callers on talk radio, it validates the very observation that you're making. You know, if you're entirely online, obviously the disinformation and the larger ecosystem is going to push those narratives, but it's so much damage that they're causing in such a scale that it's unavoidable. And even those callers are sort of bewildered. In fact, they're appealing to Hannity, in particular, to say, look, we're on your side, but please explain to them that it's too much recklessness. We love it, but it's too much. They're not being careful enough. And that's only going to escalate as they continue to bulldoze through.