On MSNBC's Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone discusses Trump and Project 2025: This is a strategy “to create trauma for federal employees”

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From the January 29, 2025, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House

NICOLLE WALLACE: It is both the oldest Trump story and the most predictable one. The confusion, the chaos, whiplash doesn't begin to describe it.

The back and forth from the White House today on its attempted freeze of federal spending and then unfreeze. The American people woke up this morning expecting to have that order challenged in court.

That was the news when we went off the air yesterday. That was until the White House issued a statement this afternoon suggesting the order that they released that was put on hold till Monday was going to be rescinded.

But hang on a second. But a short time ago, that changed again. 

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Confusion aside, the effort to freeze federal spending appears to be a sweeping overreach of presidential power that even they recognize and a sign that Donald Trump won't let something so silly as the Constitution or court order get in the way of taking a sledgehammer to the federal government and remaking it in his own image.

For the same reason, millions of federal workers were asked yesterday to decide between accepting a buyout and 8 months pay or returning to the office full time, and thereby running the risk of being furloughed later on or perhaps fired altogether.

...

Alright, Angelo. Was this draft memo in the Project 2025 amendments and footnotes, was this something that you saw coming? 

ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): The plan was. What's happening right now was part of the strategy was to create trauma for federal employees.

In fact, Russell Vought said that. And I think it's really critical, you know, there's all this discussion about, you know, some pressure, some public pressure, these judicial orders. But I also find it extremely important to note that they started to sort of obfuscate and say they were rescinding and try to walk some of these things back right when Russ Vought came into the focal point and Democrats started saying they were going to do everything possible to slow down his, sort of, approval to move in to become the OMB director.

And that's the answer to your question. This was part of the plan. The part -- the plan here was to create as much trauma and confusion for individual employees of the federal government as well as the functions of the federal government.

So you kick up a storm, you make as much dust as possible, and then it just turns into a good old scrum.

And on balance, because of the narrative dominance that they have and a lot of the rolling over and capitulating that we're seeing in the broader media landscape, they will carry Trump's water or there's a likelihood that Trump will succeed in winning out those narrative fights.

But meanwhile, the real fight, the fight over the levers of government, our civic institutions, that's what their laser focused on.

So all of this is about these initial days creating as much, you know, when you have inertia, it works in both directions. If everything is static, you need to do everything possible to get it moving so that then you can start moving the pieces. So, yes, this was a part of the Project 2025 plan, and I'll wrap by saying this.

Let's just keep in mind that Russ Vought had a 180 day agenda. It was a document about how you implement Project 2025 on a step by step, day by day basis with orders, with a plan, with a process for who they would be going to.

You put the freeze in place. You then execute this. You create as much confusion. You get those sort of workers to start to resign, and that's it. And then you use that fog to continue to barrel along and implement and take over the real levers of government so that ultimately you can get control.

Right now, it's about getting control, and that's what they're doing. 

WALLACE: Let me, to your point, Angelo, just just put up a list of the things from Project 2025, which I should say 57% of registered voters do not like.

Here's what they have done. Here -- this may explain some of the polling I just read from that Trump's approval has plunged almost 10 points in one week.

These are things that Trump has done that is in Project 2025: suspending refugee admissions, suspending asylum claims, sending the military to the southern border, declaring there are only 2 genders, drilling for oil gas in Alaska, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, withdrawing from the World Health Organization, withdrawing from a global tax deal, ending protections for federal workers, ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, freezing federal job hiring, revoking security clearances, ending efforts to fight misinformation and disinformation.

Project 2025 is so unpopular that Trump, when he was asked about it, said "That's not -- I don't -- I don't know those people. I never heard of them." And unfortunately, you know, half of the voting public believed him, voted for him anyway.

Where do you see the political exposure? And do you think we're sort of in a post political moment where that won't matter to any of these folks?

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CARUSONE: Yeah. I mean, I think that's the -- the real challenge here is that people don't like Project 2025, but they have to.

And that's probably where this flare up came. When that freeze happened, people started to connect the dots. They said, "Oh, wait a minute. I get direct access to that program."

So, even the uncertainty created a question for individuals. Now in this case, and this is why we have to be really careful, and this is ultimately why Trump can sometimes be successful in these moments -- that we have to start with the facts, but also realize that there's a narrative unfolding here is that if you say that they're taking away your ability to buy food and that it doesn't happen, the media loses credibility, the Democrats lose credibility, and they gain credibility as a result of that.

Now, that's true. That was what was about to happen and what was about to unfold. So to me, it is a real political liability, but the connection and the real question here as to whether or not there'll be political consequences is whether or not individuals are able to see that connective tissue to these real world policies.

And I think that is to me the big takeaway here both for the media and for Democrats. They have different interests, but they're an important part of this story in maintaining our society and preventing them from exercising this sort of extra legal control over the levers of government, is to not always take debate on the fights that they want you to fight about, but that these things have to be connected to the real lives of individuals.

There's a whole universe people that voted for Trump for the vibes and because they assumed that the things that they rely on are not going to be taken away from them or affected or undermined. And the second that happens, the ability for them to control the narrative will unravel, and then all the political fallout will come as a result of that. So it's a liability potentially. 

WALLACE: Yeah, such an important point. I mean, I noted yesterday that it was the first day the Democrats seemed to really get their groove back yesterday and seemed to remember why they were there, to do just that, to connect these government policies to people's lives, actual people who wake up in the morning and go to a portal or website needing a service that they pay taxes or have earned as veterans.

And the fact that it it wasn't there or might not be there mattered. But it's such an important note about keeping the credibility. 

From the January 29, 2025, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House 

NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): Angelo, as someone who we turn to for your expertise in Project 2025, what happens next?

ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Well, it's really going to depend on whether or not Russ Vought gets in. And if he does, what's gonna happen is a version of the memo that just got rescinded is going to come back around with a lot more clarity. And then after Trump already implemented Schedule F -- Russ Vought, who's going to have the power to actually execute and implement the reclassifications, is going to begin cleaving out parts of the government by converting people to fireable positions and replacing them with the loyalists that they've previously vetted, which will allow them to secure more control over the key levers of the institutions that they need to change things right now.

So that is the next step, and we just have to be aware that along the way, there are going to be these outrageous and moments, and there's going to be these norm busters too. Things that break norms. And sometimes, some of those norms are things that everybody hates, and we shouldn't be defending them. And we should focus on the things that are going to affect people's lives and recognize that this for them is not an exercise in just changing government, it is an exercise in reshaping our culture.

And whereas Democrats broadly, I think, fall in the trap sometimes of saying, "We have to fix the government. We have to make this work." This is bigger than that. So that's what's next. And they're going to use that speed. That speed in which they execute is to help build confidence and momentum for the trajectory.