On MSNBC, Angelo Carusone explains how SCOTUS immunity ruling means Project 2025 is no longer “fuel for right-wing media, but actually [could] become something we all deal with”
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From the July 2, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): Angelo, I know you've been looking at Project 2025. Why do you think it's taken the media so long to focus on it? It's all right there, out in the open, these plans, they're extrajudicial, an extraordinary abuse of power. They're the sorts of things that Trump's first White House lawyers would've warned him against doing, and they're all here on the website in black and white.
ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): I think two reasons. One, is that it's so big. You know, it's hard in the media. You have to sort of identify what's the story. It's a short segment. There are very few programs and shows and outlets that will sort of delve into that kind of complexity. And then I think the second part is like --- is the internalization that it's a real threat, right? Because the right wing, as your previous conversation, it's all sort of acknowledged it. They've been doing this forever. They've been doing this for decades right? They always organize and coordinate and collaborate and their institutions do that. They always sort of have these plans. In the first Trump administration, the Heritage Foundation says that 64% of all of the policies the Trump administration put into effect in their first year were the result of the work of just the Heritage Foundation alone. So part of it is that is this different? And I think now with the Supreme Court decision, it's provided a lens to say, “Wait a minute."
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It provides a lens for the media, for the public to say wait a minute for these plans, which seemed fantastic, illegal, maybe the checks or the guardrails we thought behind in place that would make them to make it no longer just fuel for sort of right wing media, but actually become something we all deal with. It seems much more likely now as a result of that Supreme Court decision because what they basically did was take away at best a lot of assumptions that people had. I mean, even Mitch McConnell had the assumption that there were things that the president does that are illegal because when he said I'm not supporting impeachment here because there's a criminal justice system that could take care of Donald Trump if he had done illegal stuff in the last few weeks of his administration to try to steal the election.