On MSNBC’s The ReidOut, Angelo Carusone explains the connection between Project 2025 and Donald Trump's nominations

Written by Media Matters Staff

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From the November 22, 2024, edition of MSNBC's The ReidOut

JOY REID (HOST): Voila. It turns out that the Trump administration is full of Project 2025 people. Tom Homan, his pick for border czar, was a contributor. John Ratcliffe, Trump's nominee for CIA director, contributor. Brendan Carr, Trump's pick to run the Federal Communications, contributor, wrote the chapter on the FCC. Pete Hoekstra, his pick for ambassador to Canada, contributor, and Stephen Miller, his pick for Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, contributor, and Russ Vought, of course, obviously. And I will add the person who put together this personnel database that he is putting together John McEntee also tied to it. Your thoughts?

ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): Yeah, I mean, and I think part of the reason why it's important to note that their denials didn't hold up and that they're beginning to implement this is that it's so much bigger than that policy book. Project 2025 was really the professionalization of MAGA and it was designed to sort of squeeze as much juice out of the orange out of that first year, not to implement their policies but to literally shock the system so that they have smooth runway after that to basically subdue all -- and eliminate all of the safeguards and norms that would typically prevent or slow down or be speed bumps in undermining democracy, or misusing the government, or all sorts of other things. 

And so this latest example, you had the policy book, which was all of the ideas, the aspirations of Project 2025. So now, we can use the validation that they are moving forward with it to figure out where they are going and here's where they are. The other part was the personnel database. And it's not just the names that are going to be talked about in the news, it's going to be hundreds or thousands of individuals, and that was really always the tell is that it didn't matter whether they disavowed Project 2025.

The fact is they -- all the personnel that Trump could have hired were already part of that project that been prevetted. They had been determined where they would be maximally slotted in. Personnel is policy and those are going to be the people that implement it. 

And now tonight with the news about Russ Vought, it's worth noting that he wrote a piece of Project 2025 called the Playbook, which was designed to be keep private. It was -- the first 180 days look like, it's a compilation of all of the executive orders, all the internal instructions for agencies, all the legal memos that are required to sort of legitimize or validate instructions. It is going to be the full-scale implementation of what everybody was talking about in the summer that they didn't want to happen, which was Project 2025

REID: Right, and I mean, and what it means in a sense is that Donald Trump has a plug-and-play presidency. He doesn't have to do a whole lot. It's already all written out. He is going to have the people in place. He is going to move out the career people who would stand in the way of some of the things that are outright illegal or unconstitutional. He'll just have his loyalists after he does the step, which is to get rid of they've said 50,000 some odd career employees. 

And I just wanted to show you who they would be replacing them with, who would be in charge of the list of who they would replace -- this is John McEntee, some of you might have known from his frequent TikTok videos in which he mocks women who can no longer get abortions. He is the co-founder of the conservative dating app The Right Stuff and he jokes about only men being able to vote. That guy is once again going to be in charge of personnel and he wrote the list. He helped create the list, right, of the new employees.

CARUSONE: That's right. He oversaw the database, the part that is really going to implement it. When they replace all these individuals or they restaff the government or they staff the government like any new administration does. These individuals are not just a repository of resumes. They actually vetted them to make sure they never said anything opposed to Trump, that there was full loyalty. 

And when you think about why that matters, especially in what they are planning to do, one of the things that Russ Vought is advocating for is the elimination of all the post-Watergate norms in order to weaponize the DOJ. And he also is somebody that is advocating for deploying the military against U.S. Citizens in order to quelch dissent or protest. 

So when you have a guy like John McEntee and that database, part of the prevetting isn't just, oh, they check off all the boxes in terms of their professional skills. It's also that, oh, they are sufficiently loyal, that they will allow us to do all these things otherwise would be illegal or not allowed to be done.

REID: And the thing is, you cannot say that enough, and I want you to say more about that because you are talking about deploying the U.S. Military. Remember Mark Esper who was Donald Trump's Secretary of Defense for a while, told him, "No, you can't shoot American citizens. You can't have the military shoot American citizens." He is going to replace people in the Department of Defense with people who will say you can. And that you can deploy the military against protesters, that you can arrest journalists for reporting things that Donald Trump doesn't like. That sort of thing, right?

CARUSONE: That's exactly right. One of the things that Russ Vought did after he left the administration in this sort of period that he has had and has been referenced with that 180-day agenda is they have been building out the legal documentation, what they consider to be the legal documentation, to justify internally the deployment of the military. I know it sounds hysterical. How could we possibly -- this sounds outrageous. 

No. This is part of the plan. They literally wrote a plan down and then prepared all of the supporting documentation so they could check off that box and then this is where the personnel police comes in. They are making sure they have the right people to implement it. Russ Vought gave a speech where he talked about the fact that he was planning on doing this or at least to have the resources ready so that if there was a sufficient blow back, they could deploy it. 

I want to put a bow on it to note that one of the through lines here, why they want to sort of -- it's not just revenge against political opponents. That obviously gets a lot of fear. The part that always stands out to me is the rationale for why they need to do these things is to end multiculturalism in America. That's not my term. That's what Russ Vought said, that the reason why you go after immigrants first, that you start to implement all these big radical changes is that this is the beginning of the end of multiculturalism in America

REID: And what is the opposite of multiculturalism?

CARUSONE: America. Diversity. No, I'm sorry. The opposite of that is what they want, which is sort of an ethno-nationalist state.