On MSNBC's Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone explains how Project 2025 and Trump are “moving in lockstep”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
On July 11, Angelo Carusone joined MSNBC's Deadline: White House to discuss Project 2025. Below is the entire conversation, with host Nicolle Wallace and guests Vaughn Hillyard and Andrew Weissmann.
Citation From the July 11, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): It is the 900 page book that Team Trump doesn't ever want you to read or crack open or really even know about. It is the single most comprehensive effort to put MAGA's authoritarian vision and plans on paper, it's the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 and it is now bursting into public view in spite of, or maybe because of, Trump's repeated denials.
Even in spaces where Project 2025 is not explicitly mentioned or quoted, the vision it outlines is on the lips of every MAGA acolyte and true believer.
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Trump's allies are not even trying to hide the radical plans for the country should Donald Trump prevail in November and serve another term. As for Donald Trump himself, he's once again claiming he's never heard of Project 2025 -- he knows nothing about it.
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The ties between Team Trump and the Heritage Foundation run deep and wide. Just ask them.
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And it turns out that the Heritage Foundation agrees wholeheartedly with what Trump just said about them. Here's the director of Project 2025 on a podcast in a clip unearthed by Media Matters.
[CLIP BEGINS]
PAUL DANS (PROJECT 2025 DIRECTOR): I think, you know, President Trump's very bought in with this. We're fortunate to have John McEntee, who many of your listeners may know was, he was, helmed the Office of Presidential Personnel in what I would call the fourth quarter of the first term of Trump. But he is one of our senior advisers.
[CLIP ENDS]
Citation From the July 11, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): Again, this is why I don't want to zip through this, Angelo. This one is wildly unpopular. And even Trump knows that because his abortion bans and the abortion bans he supports and the abortion ban supported by the kinds of justices, even on the Supreme Court and on the Federal bench support brutal abortion bans. They're being rejected in places like Kansas and Ohio and North Carolina.
And I wonder just as someone, Angelo, who's an expert at sort of the intersection between the flurry and the blur of extremism that comes from the Trump movement and some of the challenges the press has in covering it, how you would advise the press to sort of hit pause and stop on this single -- this single outrageous piece of this 900-page document.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): I think it starts with the recognition -- and that's where you started the segment -- which is that they are one in the same. Despite what's being said, despite the distancing, and in fact, the fact that Trump is trying to distance himself, how that fallout plays out is illustrative because as much as he's saying this -- which shows that he realizes it's unpopular and could have political consequences, the way rest of the movement and in particular, the way the Heritage Foundation is responding is important.
And so Kevin Roberts, the guy that talked about, you know, a "bloodless revolution" that everybody sort of allows them to go forward with this, which sort of started this spiral of distancing, was just on a radio show yesterday talking about the fact that if you look at what the RNC put out, what Trump's campaign says, and what Project 2025 says, the overlap is tremendous. And that he understands the political calculation for Trump to be saying these things publicly, but that they're still moving forward in lockstep.
So, they haven't gotten the message yet. And in fact, he's trying to keep everybody, sort of, "Hey, it's okay, we're still moving forward with this despite what's being said publicly for political purposes."
And that's why I think it's important to start there because it shows how real it is. That it's not just sort of some ideas or expressions, but that it can be both operationalized -- that they understand that they need power first. So, they need to win the elections before they can implement these things.
And then the second thing gets into what we talked about before, which is the granularity. This one page, 562, is very very specific. And even if a lot of these things don't hold up in the end in court, which is scary, the whole idea behind this is to do some really big shocking things early on. Mass arrests, mass deportation, so that you get people in line. They are going to be advocates. It's going to be journalists. It's going to be across the sector, so you dial down that political opposition.
So, the same thing that they would do in the abortion context, they want to do in the educator context as well for anyone that's pushing things related to LGBTQ youth or transgender and they hope that they can send a clear, a really clear message there.
And that's how I think people should focus on it. One, to not take what Trump is saying at face value, which I don't think anyone is doing, but to explore layer further, which is how is Project 2025, how is the Republicans responding to this. And they seem to be on the same message, that this is a wink and a nod and they get it.
And the second is to look at some of these examples. And then the last thing I would say is what are they doing next? What's the next operational step? And this is where Russ Vought comes in. Because he's been talked about, you know Vaughn brought him up earlier.
He's on the RNC platform. He's one of the authors of Project 2025. He's writing a new document called "The 180-day Agenda," which is actually a minute by minute breakdown of how they will implement parts of Project 2025 in those first 180 days. That will not be a public document. But the mere fact that that is moving forward right now and given his intersection across segments, both the platform committee and Project 2025, it's got the blessing of a would-be Trump administration. And that's the significance. It's very real, these things are not abstractions.
Citation From the July 11, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House
WALLACE: That is the plan in black and white. And they seek to do these things through fear and force. But they seek to end this idea of the courts, and the rule of law existing with those of us on "Earth One." That doesn't -- that's not how it works anymore.
CARUSONE: Yeah, and it seems that others have gotten the message. One of the top contenders for VP is Senator Vance was on Meet the Press this past Sunday, was asked about this very issue -- of prosecuting political opponents. And he basically rationalized it.
He said -- he basically adopted this idea of revenge. Maybe you should have a special prosecutor for Joe Biden, that you should investigate these things, that if there's nothing to worry about, then they have nothing to worry about with the special prosecutor. Instead of starting with the perspective that we shouldn't be manipulating the DOJ and using it in that way to go after political opponents.
And I think that's the real fear here is that one of the effects of having this massive right-wing media apparatus that can take these ideas is that it doesn't just take the idea, it can reverberate it to the rest of the right-wing media ecosystem to basically function the way a whip would in congress to get people in line.
And that's really what's happened. This is not something that is on the fringes, now. This is something that has been put right through the center of the Republican power.
And so to your question before, how do you prepare for something like this? I thought what Andrew said was right. You kind of can't. You have to prevent. This is one of those instances that the only way you can prepare is to prevent.
The full interview can be seen here:
Citation From the July 11, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House