On Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone details how Project 2025 will be used as an “instrument of revenge”
Published
Citation From the September 30, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): Angelo, this is what Project 2025, the policy blueprint that would animate the Trump presidency, says about NOAA and all of the agencies that would protect people from catastrophic storms like this. I'll read from The Hill's reporting. "Project 2025, a controversial plan that seeks to inform a future conservative administration, calls for the 'break up' of the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, NOAA. NOAA houses the National Weather Service. The plan, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, says that the weather service should 'fully commercialize its forecasting operations' and focus on providing data to private companies. It also calls for a 'review' of the work of the National Hurricane Center. It acknowledges that the center provides important public safety information but also says its data should be presented neutrally rather than in a way that makes points about climate change." And on the point of climate change I think Trump said over the weekend that climate change is good because there would be "more oceanfront property." So, that's the choice in 36 days.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah. I mean, look, there's two Project 2025 tie-ins. One, is the one that you just read which is that they want to get rid of NOAA or greatly reduce its output because it sort of reinforces the narrative about climate change too much. I mean we see that play out, that's pretty standard right-wing fare. Over the last few weeks, they've been hyping up right-wing influencers have been complaining that this hurricane is being overhyped as a design to prop up climate change. I mean, that is standard agenda. It obviously has devastating consequences.
The other tie-in that is really disturbing is that Russell Vought, who is writing the playbook, the 100-day agenda, the step-by-step process for the first 100 days of the administration, the implementation guide for Project 2025, when he was the OMB director, he made tweaks to the way that disaster relief was distributed that blocked it -- the disaster relief from getting to Puerto Rico after that major hurricane, where it killed thousands of individuals. And other changes so that it was harder for disaster relief to get out there.
So, there are sort of two prongs here. One is to erode science and undermine and attack anything that reinforces climate change. And that's the NOAA stuff that you were reading. And the other element is to use the levers of government power to make it harder for basic disaster relief to get to those most in need. And in their minds it's usually Democrats or people that vote against them. It's either going to be an instrument of revenge with the Project 2025 tie-in or a policy aspiration to reinforce the lie that climate change is a hoax.