Angelo Carusone and Alex Wagner discuss Project 2025: “The more you learn about Project 2025, the more you don't want anything to do with it”
“it's actually an action plan. It will change people's lives. ... The more people learn about it, the more they don't like it.”
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From the July 12, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Alex Wagner Tonight
ALEX WAGNER (HOST): But as far as what Project 2025 is, it's a long one. It's a long read. And in it, there are some deeply distressing proposals, including but not limited to, abolishing the Department of Education, replacing nonpartisan civil servants with political appointees, moving the Department of Justice under presidential control, targeting abortion medication, expanding deportation powers, and expanding presidential powers. What do you find most disturbing about the project?
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): The thing that disturbs me the most about Project 2025, the document you referred to, which their 900-page blueprint, is that it's not a set of aspirational ideas that they're sort of rallying around. It's actually -- it's the granularity. It's an extremely detailed plan, a step-by-step guide for how you can implement an authoritarian regime, but initially just pure revenge.
And the theory behind it is that you go in there, you follow those steps, one by one, and the consequence of that is that you basically shock everybody. You engage in, as you noted, firing thousands of federal employees and replacing them with the database they already have of people they can go into various parts of the federal government and enact these policies immediately.
You arrest a bunch of individuals, people that are distributing abortion medication, publishers of books that they consider to be too favorable to trans education. Teachers and librarians. You just do mass arrests of individuals for distributing pornography.
And the idea behind that is to make it very clear that things have changed, to change our culture immediately. And then you just continue to follow the steps.
So that's what scares me the most, is not the individual things, although they're scary, it's the granularity. It's detailed. And that's to me, the difference maker here.
WAGNER: Right, it's not a lofty plan, high-in-the-sky, these are our long-term goals. It was -- this is a how-to manual. And the possibility of enacting that, sort of the steps of that manual, is laying at the doorstep in November.
I wonder what you make of the messaging around it, both on the left and the right. This is President Biden talking about Project 2025 tonight. Let's take a listen.
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So, I mean, I think it's a good thing that the front-runner on the Democratic ticket is talking about this. Do you think Trump gets away with saying, "I have nothing to do with this?" Are people not paying attention enough yet that Trump can get a pass on this?
CARUSONE: I don't think he's going to get a pass on this. Now, I think it's really important, and significant in the fact that he is doing what he's doing. That he's trying to sort of separate himself from policies that he has embraced, pretty clearly and that his former administration officials have been authoring.
They know how deeply unpopular and terrifying what's in this document is. That's the thing, the more you learn about Project 2025, the more you don't want anything to do with it. Because like I said, it is not just ideas, it's actually an action plan. It will change people's lives.
Even things like getting rid of the 30-year mortgage. Regardless of your politics, that's not a guy — I would not want that. It is really specific. So, the more people learn about it, the more they don't like it.
So, he knows he has to disassociate himself. The problem is he can't go too far. I mean, we know what happens when Trump wants to incinerate something, right? He files lawsuits. They've been out there raising money and operating in his name and he hasn't sent any legal threats or incinerated them in a big way. He just said, "I don't know anything about it."
And yet, just yesterday, Kevin Roberts, the same guy that started this catalyst, by saying that it will be a "bloodless revolution" as long as liberals go along with Project 2025 policies, which sort of started this big wave of people paying attention paying attention to it for the first time.
Just yesterday he was bragging about the fact that the Trump campaign staff and Project 2025 staff have been working arm in arm for years, and that he anticipates a meeting very soon to figure out how they navigate what he described as the political tactical maneuvers that Trump is being forced to do in order to win elections.
And that's the key here. Trump is doing it because Republicans understand that in order to put anything in place you first need power. And you get power by winning elections. So, will he get away with it amongst his people? Probably. Because they are engaged on a wink and a nod. But I don't think that he will get away with it with the rest.