On MSNBC's Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone explains why Project 2025 architects see JD Vance as an opportunity to implement their “vision"
Carusone: “Project 2025 is an articulation of the ideas that have been incubating in the right-wing fever swamps for years… JD Vance is just a reflection of that”
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From the July 26, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): Angelo, Donald Trump picked JD Vance in another political moment, but JD Vance is what Donald Trump believes. It is how he sees the world and it is consistent with Project 2025, which is the blueprint for a second Trump presidency.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah, completely. I mean, JD Vance is -- Trump gets away with it to a degree to some of what he says, even amongst his own people, because they assume there's a character on top of it. "Well, he's just saying that stuff," but deep down there's some degree that he's going to be less terrible than what he says. But Vance is just an unfiltered, raw, sort of reflection of what has been percolating in the right-wing fever swaps. So, the cat lady stuff, all this idea about family, the notion that a woman is not valuable unless they're either married and/or having children. All of that is stuff that he didn't come up with, that he started to incorporate into his public messaging when he was trying to win a competitive primary in Ohio. And he decided that one of the most effective ways to do that was to parrot back -- it was to parrot out what he was hearing in right-wing media.
So, it is exactly what Donald Trump believes, but because Donald Trump has this long brand and this character -- kayfabe, the way sort of a wrestling character can get away with some theatrics -- it doesn't turn into the same sort of questioning moment. It doesn't lead to the same inflection that, say, when you hear it from a person like JD Vance who doesn't have character or any of the charisma and, in fact, actually looks and sounds and feels a little uncomfortable, uneasy and sort of weird, you say, "Yeah, I don't like that. What he says, that doesn't resonate with me," when you start to put it together. And that's where the difference is, is that JD Vance isn't saying anything different than Trump says or believes or Project 2025, but because of who he is and what he represents, it's actually forcing people to think about it for the first time.
WALLACE: Angelo, I don't buy that Trump regrets picking JD Vance because of the awful things he stands for, I think Trump just regrets the awful press JD Vance is getting. Just talk about the symmetry between 2025 and what JD Vance has said out loud on podcasts and in interviews.
CARUSONE: Yeah, it's important to note here that there's a strong relationship between JD Vance and Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation, who is sort of driving a lot of this Project 2025 stuff. He wrote the forward for Kevin Roberts' book, where all the proceeds are going towards funding additional work related to the design and implementation of Project 2025. The Heritage Foundation has celebrated -- Project 2025 has celebrated JD Vance as the selection. JD Vance has praised Roberts and their relationship and how much he relies on him for advice.
So, there is -- one, there's that the deep, intense alignment there. But two, what Vance says is exactly what we see in Project 2025. So, this idea that you're not just going to punish women for abortions, but you're going to go one step further and track menstrual cycles so that you could sort of find out and -- sniff out examples of potentially people getting, you know, extralegal abortions. The design around trying to emphasize family in a much more intense way to create sort of hierarchies there, where family automatically has some more rights and power. All that stuff is laid out in Project 2025.
And, so, to your point, what is blowing back here -- at least what is perceived to be -- is not because of what Vance reflects or says, it's that he is getting negative press. Just the way that Trump tried to distance himself from Project 2025 without fully shutting it down, it's the same thing here. It's like, Vance isn't doing anything or saying anything that is that different than what Trump says or Project 2025 says. It's just that he got some negative press because he isn't tested.
And I think, honestly, the person that will get more blowback is not Vance first. It's going to be Tucker Carlson and Don Jr. And that's the key here. And that's really what I think is important to keep in mind. Project 2025 is an articulation of the ideas that have been incubating in the right-wing fever swamps for years, and we've been seeing percolating in right-wing media, and they see this as a chance to implement that vision. JD Vance is just a reflection of that and a big part of why he became what he is right now. All of the things we are talking about, these all happened on right-wing media programs because he was trying to appeal to an audience. He was just reflecting back to them, and one of those things was to get Tucker in his pocket, and that's what happened.