MSNBC's Vaughn Hillyard explains how J.D. Vance would be “very astute” in implementing Project 2025
Published
Citation From the July 15, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House
NICOLE WALLACE (HOST): Vaughn Hillyard, I know you've been reading Project 2025 sort of page by page, this 900 pages -- 600 pages long. Would J.D. Vance and his past statements, let me read them again -- "You are an idiot if you voted for Trump, he might be America's Hitler, he's a cynical a-hole, he's cultural heroine, obnoxious and reprehensible" -- would he pass the loyalty test as outlined by John McEntee and the folks that created Project 2025 to work in a Trump administration if he wasn't the VP pick?
VAUGHN HILLYARD (CORRESPONDENT): I'm not sure what the statute of limitations is on statements for the team that is putting that personnel together.
But let me tell you why J.D. Vance is intriguing -- real fast, in a nutshell if I could -- for the Project 2025 folks. And that's because of the ability to make civil servants and turn them into political appointees.
J.D. Vance has been on the front lines of articulating that -- in his words -- that 90% of the federal workforce -- in his words -- are liberals. That at the department and agency level have been barriers to being able to implement conservative policies. And that the Trump administration for four years, was not able to be as effective as they wanted to be because of the liberals -- in the words of J.D. Vance -- who were in the executive branch under departments and agencies.
And J.D. Vance over the last few years has been on the front lines of calling for what is known as "Schedule F." This is something that Donald Trump signed -- it's an executive action in October of 2020, just before leaving the White House, which converted a great share of federal workers and made them political appointees so that they would be more easily able to be fired and replaced by conservatives who, again, Project 2025 building this personnel database led by his former director of personnel in the White House, where they would be able to know who was coming in so they could make a more efficient four years for Donald Trump.
J.D. Vance is somebody who's very astute in understanding how that vision could be implemented at the department and agency levels for a second Trump administration.