On MSNBC’s The Reid Out, Angelo Carusone explains how the Supreme Court and GOP-led states have laid the groundwork to implement Project 2025
Carusone: “The document that he referenced there. … It is the step-by-step plan for implementing all of the extremist, all of the authoritarian parts of Project 2025”
Published
Citation From the August 15, 2024, edition of MSNBC's The Reid Out
JOY REID (HOST): And we begin tonight with damning new video from a former Trump cabinet member and key Project 2025 architect, Russell Vought, who confirms what we all know, that Donald Trump has personally had talks with Vought about his work behind Project 2025. And Trump gave him his blessing.
[CLIP BEGINS]
RUSSEL VOUGHT: It's interesting, he's in fact not even opposing himself to a particular policy. He's been at our organization. He's raised money for our organization. He's blessed it from the you know, I remember walking into our last, you know, office and told him what I was going to do. So, he's very supportive of what we do.
[CLIP ENDS]
This new audio comes from two investigative reporters with the nonprofit Center For Climate Reporting, who secretly recorded a nearly 2 hour conversation with Vought who thought he was meeting with some high dollar donors, which in and of itself is problematic in what it implies about the potential selling of access to an American administration.
And while Vought currently runs his own think tank, he previously served as the policy director for the Republican National Convention Committee and recently helped to rewrite the official party platform. And he's been a huge Project 2025 promoter. Publicly, Trump will tell anyone who listens that he has no idea what this thing is.
[CLIP BEGINS]
DONALD TRUMP: I don't know what the hell it is, that's Project 25. "He's involved in Project," and then they read some of the things and they are extreme. I mean, they're seriously extreme, but I don't know anything about it. I don't want to know anything about it.
[CLIP ENDS]
REID: Those denials seem real dishonest given what Vought told those two reporters and given the fact that nearly 140 individuals who worked in the Trump administration are affiliated with Project 2025.
But here's what's really concerning. The Trump conservatives have a secret plan that they've intentionally been hiding. The reporters with the Center For Climate Reporting also spoke with another Project 2025 author, a Vought aide who admitted that there is a secretive second phase of Project 2025 that is supervised by Vought. Apparently, the Heritage Foundation has a giant policy packet filled with executive orders and agenda items that will be handed to Trump administration officials on day 1.
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Politico has reported that Vought is in close contact with Trump, speaking with him once a month. And according to Vought himself, he also speaks with the campaign. Vought also has been mentioned as a possible chief of staff in a second Trump administration. If Trump wins in November, what Vought and Project 2025 fanatics have in store is the complete upending of American society.
Here he is explaining what his think tank, the Center For Renewing America, which alongside the Heritage Foundation, has been at the heart of Project 2025 promotes.
[CLIP BEGINS]
VOUGHT: An organization that I helped turn into the Death Star that is accomplishing all the debates that you are reading about. I think you have to rehabilitate Christian nationalism. You have the largest deportation in history, block funding for Planned Parenthood. I want to be the person who crushes the deep state.
[CLIP ENDS]
When asked what would happen if people took to the streets in protest, he told the reporters that Trump would deploy the military to silence the unrest. Think about that for a second. These are the core philosophies of the MAGA Republican Party, and it should come as no surprise that JD Vance was embraced by Vought given that he shares the same beliefs.
[CLIP BEGINS]
VOUGHT: So, I am very happy with the JD pick. I think it's transformative, for sure. And he's you know, he's -- think of him as a member version of what we do. So there's no think tank, no policy organization, no battle plan creator other than us for the world view that I think Donald Trump has and that, JD has.
[CLIP ENDS]
Joining me now is David Jolly, MSNBC political analyst and former Republican congressman who's no longer affiliated with the party, and Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of Media Matters. Angelo, I do want to start with you. That second clip, this is the aide to Mr. Vought. He said that they have a second set of policy proposals and instructions that they would give to members of a second Trump administration, but not email it to them -- not email to them. And he said the reason for that is that if you emailed it to their official emails, you could file -- one could file a FOIA. The media and people like you, sir, would -- could potentially file Freedom of Information Act requests and get copies of those instructions. That to me is one of the most chilling things that I heard -- that they've got these secret plans they want to keep away from the media.
For you, what's the most chilling stuff that you heard?
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): The fact that he's already done something like this but on a smaller scale. So in the first 6 months of 2021, more than 20 states, banned -- have either legislation or executive orders that banned teaching critical race theory in schools. We went back and looked at those states that did that.
The overwhelming majority of the states that implemented that work were directly based off of the model language, the model legislation, and the model executive orders that Russell Vought's new organization had drafted at the time. And so if you take what he did then and you apply that to the conversation he just had, and that's what we've been warning about, is that that 900 page policy book was sort of -- just put everything on the table, all the ideas, all the things they wanted. But the 180 day agenda, the document that he referenced there, the thing that he is drafting as a part of this Project 2025 initiative is sort of the bundle of things to implement. The executive orders, the directives at the various departments.
It is the step-by-step plan for implementing all of the extremist, all of the authoritarian parts of Project 2025. And because he's already demonstrated the ability to do this as a small scale and that they know they have to do this in the shadows -- that, to your point, is extraordinarily chilling.
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REID: Angelo, there's a part in this conversation he's having with these two people he thinks are donors where he talks about their massive deportation plan. And he says, "We're going to do mass deportation." And then he goes from that to saying, "Mass deportation will help us get rid of multiculturalism. We'll just deport all of these brown people. Then we'll get rid of multiculturalism." And then he goes directly from there to the thing that David just said.
He says, "We then need to reintroduce and sort of, you know, change the vision of Christian" -- he first says "nationism," and then he says "nationalism." And he says "Christian nationalism." So, there's a direct through line in their mind to making America whiter, to taking away women's reproductive rights, to force women that are here already to have children, and getting rid of multiculturalism and then adding Christian nationalism. To them, they're all one policy.
CARUSONE: It is one policy, and that's right. And if you look at the work that he's done, he's written about this publicly. He's talked about this publicly. He's been a big advocate for Christian nationalism.
And then beyond that, you know, when you get into the mass deportation side of it, the flip side of that is when you start to look into some of the stuff he's written, some of the stuff in Project 2025, some of the stuff in the Center For Renewing America, you'll find out that they want to then change the way immigration is done to essentially privilege Christian immigrants so that they would make that one of the key factors for getting into the country, for allowing for immigration.
So on the one hand, they're pushing out and they're getting rid of multiculturalism. On the other hand, then they're flooding the zone with what they -- with sort of white Christians. And that's the flip side of all this, is that they have a plan on both ends of this.
And one of the things that disturbs me is that when you think about the Supreme Court decision that just came out that granted immunity to presidents, it actually reduces and gets rid of some of the friction in the system that made it hard -- that would have made it harder for them, at least a little bit, to implement some of the extremist policies they need in order to execute this, which is actually using the military to both quell and suppress any protests, and also simultaneously to execute and implement a lot of the deportations that he's talking about.
So, a lot of these things became a lot more possible and real in the last few months because of decisions that the Supreme Court has made.
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REID: I'm going to give you the last word on this, Angelo, because you all got a copy of this book. What did I miss that's also in this treatise?
CARUSONE: I think the two things that I would just note is that, one, in it, he just -- he talks about the fact that having a child should not be a "optional individual choice." And that's one of the through lines there. Take away the decision from women and further disempower them.
I think the second part, though, is the tie in with Christian nationalism is that he describes he describes natural order, which is, you know, natural law. Right? That's religious terms. But he describes the natural order of things as Western philosophy and the American international order. That's what he says is sort of the one thing that he ties in with nature, and that it's time to sort of really, really implement that and make that not just here, but then impose that globally. And it is sort of a Christian nationalist vision and then beyond.
REID: It is The Handmaid's Tale. If you've not read that and you've not seen the series, that is what they are trying to do. David Jolly, Angelo Carusone, thank you both very much.