On Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone discusses how “they've gone a little bit further than even Project 2025 proposed” and that's why informing the public will be crucial
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From the February 6, 2025, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): I guess, Angelo, the other half of that, though, is it's not what they're designed for. The country was founded and predicated on a two party system and three equal branches of government. And what you have is one of the two parties has collapsed upon itself, and one of the three branches has thus collapsed on itself.
There is no Republican that I ever met who would think RFK was a good person to have any job in Donald Trump's cabinet. There's just no way. I haven't been, a Republican in good standing for close to a decade, but that I know. So, you know, you paint a really bleak picture of of Musk making all this progress and being more than an accelerant, but the person with the fortitude to do the unpopular things.
It is also true, though, that Trump has already reversed course. They walked back the Gaza as the next Club Med, I think about twelve hours later. Birthright citizenship, the door has been slammed shut for now. I mean, just paint the other picture if there is one of what could slow this.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah, there is. I often these days, I feel like I'm in an abusive relationship with almost everybody I interact with because on the one hand, I sort of terrify them about how to and then on the other hand, "But wait! There's something that you could consider."
WALLACE: What does it say that I love it? I love it.
CARUSONE: Because there is actually a truth to a lot of that, which is that -- you said this earlier in the week -- when you were saying the politics haven't kicked in yet. And they were real perilous. You know, when Orbán did a very similar thing in Hungary, it's worth considering that in order to really establish the kind of authoritarian society that exists there now, he had to amend the constitution six times in his first year, and he had an enormous advantage in the political arena. He had a much bigger lead. His party had a lot more control over the legislature in order to execute that. Republicans don't have that kind of control right now.
What they basically have is, you know, Musk has provided a lot of space. They've -- in some cases, they've gone a little bit further than even Project 2025 proposed. Things that they left on the cutting room floor, they feel comfortable to do now. But as you noted, a lot of these things are so deeply unpopular, and there's such a thin margin.
But when the rubber meets the road and the politics come into question, you start to see the need to walk back, compromise, adapt, or adjust to reality.
And in a way, this is where I think it's worth, you know, just having a little bit of a horizonal view, both in terms of how bad it could get, but also the reality as long as we continue to be wise and smart and, you know, stiffen our spines and not give them more power than they have, they recognize that they're also putting themselves in a bind here too.
They're -- they are effectively tying their shoes together. They are a bit high on their own supply. They're taking more extreme actions as a result of it when they haven't shored up the basic politics. At some point, given their razor thin margins in the Senate and the House, the reality of reelection is going to kick in here. You can only use the threat of a primary for so long against certain individuals. That doesn't work against some of these house members that are in districts that are either previously Democratic, likely Democratic, currently Democratic, and they just happen to go Republican last time. And that's when the politics come in.
And I think it's important for the media to continue to tell their story, for the Republic to continue to triage, but then us not to lose sight of this sort of short term strategy, which is that as things slow down and the reality gets met, we have to be able to provide the connective tissue so that people understand both the harms that are being caused here and are prevented.
And two, that they still have power, that all the power now does not sit in the hands of unelected individuals, but rather we are still a functioning democracy despite all of these attacks on the basic tenants of our norms and our society.