On MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone explains how Project 2025 would turn the government into “an instrument of revenge” for Donald Trump

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

From the September 3, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House

NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): Angelo, I know you are the person we turn to for your granular understanding of Project 2025 -- and I hate asking anybody to ever put Trump's norm busting and perversion of government in any sort of ranking -- but just tell me, in terms of how radical and how much a departure from any of his predecessors, his plans for DOJ and the FBI are as laid out in Project 2025 and in his own words in these interviews?

ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): I mean, there's nothing like this. I mean, not in our history at least. And the idea is that you don't just use the existing levers. That study, even if we were to compare it to the past, you would still be using the existing levers in some way or different way. But that's not what Project 2025 is calling for. What Project 2025 is calling for is to take the existing levers within the Department of Justice, wipe them out, and replace them with a series of pre-vetted, pre-designed appointees who will go in and then modify the Department of Justice and convert it into, as you noted, an agent, an instrument of revenge and retaliation. And the idea behind that is to go after as many former, you know, political opponents, members of the media, other targets as quickly as possible to sort of shock everybody into either ducking and covering and accepting what comes next, or breaking and just aligning, and -- go along to get along. That's the difference here, is that they don't just want to use the existing levers. They want to wipe out what's there and build something new and convert it into this instrument of revenge.

And the part that you noted I'll sort of wrap on is that, you know, one of the things that happened after that Supreme Court decision -- and it's reflected in the Center For Renewing America, which is one of the Project 2025 partner organizations, and it's run by Russ Vought, who's a really influential part in all of this. They've described what they want to do from day one as 'eliminating all the post-Watergate norms.' What they've said is that the president not being -- holding his hand on the levers of the Department of Justice is not a practice that needs to be followed anymore, it never should have happened, that it was a post-Watergate norm. And the moment that Trump gets reelected, that that norm goes out the window so they can begin this process. And that's the best way that I can describe it. You can't compare it to anything in the past.

WALLACE: Angelo, there's a mistake people make though in thinking that he didn't travel very far down the road. You know, if it's a marathon, he went about 16 miles. Right? Like, he didn't go all 26. But he -- you know, when you read Geoff Berman's book, I mean, he wanted John Kerry prosecuted. He wanted Greg Craig prosecuted. SDNY wouldn't do it. It still happened. I mean, the mistake we make in covering what you're talking about, Project 2025's specificity and radical nature, is misunderstanding how far he went to doing all of that in his first term.

CARUSONE: Yeah. Basically, what he tried to do is speed through a school zone, but there was a bunch of speed bumps there. And that's why it was so difficult to happen the first time around. But a lot of these figures that are part of Project 2025, a lot of these, sort of, agents of revenge were all, as you noted, part of the first administration who are now going to come back. 

And, you know, one of the things that I think puts clearly into focus is Kash Patel, who was one of the people that he was going to use in the last few weeks as he was trying to figure out some way to sort of convert the Department of Justice into another tool to help him stay in power -- the Department of Defense into a tool to stay in power. You know, he's a full-on acolyte. There was a conversation he was having with Steve Bannon before Steve Bannon was put in jail where Bannon was explicitly describing plans for a second Trump administration. And he kept saying -- Bannon kept reiterating, 'People think we're kidding, but we're not. We mean what we're saying here. We are going to arrest people, prosecute people, put people in jail. We are going to eliminate all the members of the deep state.'

And when they say deep state, they're referring to the exact same safeguards and slowdowns that you were referring to, is that the things that they tried to implement in the first administration, those are either norms or individual members of the government that were acting in line with the rule of law. And what they're proposing with the second Trump administration, with Project 2025 is to get rid of those speed bumps, get rid of the individuals, eliminate all the norms that essentially protected us from them running those last few miles of that marathon the first time around. There's no going back from a second Trump administration.

[...]

WALLACE: I mean, Angelo, this is where I think we still fall down on the job, not you, but me, covering the threat he represents to the rule of law. What are your thoughts on how we bring this into sharp relief for voters in the next 60 days?

CARUSONE: I think it's really important to sometimes -- I've struggled with this too, because I think, obviously, Trump has been such a fixture of our conversation for so long that the impressions, ideas, the notions about him are sort of calcified. And so, you know, to sort of pick up on what Amanda was saying before, sometimes it can be hard to believe it because there is this character part of it. It's like a WWE thing. There's some kayfabe going on. So you would say, 'Well, that's part of his brand, but he wouldn't really do those things. Right? I mean, he's just doing it because he's trying to win and it's just talk. It's not real.'

And I think one the things that I've landed on is that so much of what he says is actually fruit of a poison tree. It is coming from a larger right-wing media landscape. And I think that's part of the reason why the Project 2025 discussion has had such penetration into the zeitgeist. It's because it's not that the ideas were new, but the branding, the wrap around, the narrative about it was new. And it helped people sort of look at it through a different framework.

And I think the one thing that could be helpful here in connecting the dots on Trump is as we talk about Trump, to also be mindful about where some of these things are coming from. Because when you see the figures and where these ideas are originating from, the real, truly -- not just the extremist elements, but the -- they're building power on what used to be considered the fringes. And now he's moved the fringes front and center. And I don't think that most people fully appreciate that yet, to your point. And that's what I think is helpful. We really need to start talking about these things as the fruit of the poison tree and putting the spotlight on the tree too.