Media Matters is represented by Elias Law Group.
MSNBC's The Weekend discusses Project 2025 with Angelo Carusone: “Project 2025 is going to staff the Trump administration”
Carusone on extensive links between Project 2025 and Trump: “They're in cahoots here. It's political maneuvering, and that's because they know that every time people find out something about Project 2025, they don't like it regardless of their politics.”
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From the July 13, 2024, edition of MSNBC's The Weekend
SYMONE SANDERS-TOWNSEND (CO-HOST): Welcome back to The Weekend. The Republican National Convention, it kicks off in just let me check my watch — two days time, folks. And before the festivities even begin, it has become clear that the party platform takes a lot of inspiration from what we are calling Donald Trump's Project 2025. Trump is still trying to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation's ultra-conservative, maybe a little radical agenda for a second Trump term, but dozens of former administration officials, they have ties to Project 2025.
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SANDERS-TOWNSEND: Joining us at the table, the founder of Democracy Docket, Marc Elias. He's also partner at the Elias Law Group. And the president of Media Matters, Angelo Carusone, is with us. Whoo, Okay. Can I just say, Angelo, you have Media Matters — has exposed a lot of people, actually, by just posting what they have said over the years. And in your newsletter this week, there was a large section that was dedicated to Project 2025.
Can you just talk about these claims that the Trump people know nothing about Project 2025? You got Chris LaCivita, who is one of the senior advisers to the Trump campaign. He's like, this is not our platform. Our platform is what Donald Trump is saying. This is not us, but it — I mean, we saw — put the names back on the screen, folks. We see the names. Put the names on the screen. Like, please, do not gaslight us. Are the names coming on the screen?
ALICIA MENENDEZ (CO-HOST): There are too many names. They can't fit them all on the screen, Symone.
MICHAEL STEELE (CO-HOST): There they are.
MENENDEZ: There you go.
SANDERS-TOWNSEND: Angelo, please.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS): Yeah. I mean, look. I think I'll start with saying — let's even say everything they're saying is true. They have no idea about Project 2025, which obviously is false. It wouldn't matter anyway, and here's why. Because one of the things that Project 2025 is doing, and this is the one thing that all of the Trump stuff is aligned on is that they're gonna invoke Schedule F, fire thousands of federal employees, and they're gonna need to replace them. And the only place that has the repository for — and the database, they're already compiling the personnel to replace them with.
So Project 2025 already has that one thing. So even if Trump doesn't know anything about it, it would make no difference because Project 2025 is going to staff the Trump administration.
But beyond that, I mean, you had Kevin Roberts just this week after Trump's initial, disavowal going on right-wing podcast and saying, we understand the political tactic, the maneuvering that Trump is needing to do here. We're not concerned. You don't need to be concerned, meaning don't cannibalize them, that they're doing this for politics.
Just two days ago, Kevin Roberts was on another radio show where he was talking about the fact that the Trump campaign and the Project 2025 staff have been working arm in arm for the past year as they develop these policies.
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MENENDEZ: Angelo, I hand it back to you, but there it is. You didn't have to sum it up yourself.
CARUSONE: Thank you. Yeah. I mean, there you have it. I mean, and that came after the initial disavow. So they sort of know they're in it — they're in cahoots here. It's political maneuvering, and that's because they know that every time people find out something about Project 2025, they don't like it regardless of their politics. There's a lot of the revenge part that Trump's people like, but there's a lot in there that Trump's people won't like, like getting rid of 30-year mortgages. I mean, there's all everything — time somebody learns something new about Project 2025, they walk away from it. And so, of course, they don't wanna embrace it and they're gonna run, but it is — the associations are there. This is what the future looks like, and we have a key overview right now.
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STEELE: Angelo, I'd like to focus a little bit, and get your thoughts on some of the election language, that is found, in the platform. It notes, you know, we pledge to protect the voting rights of every citizen. We urge state and local officials to take all appropriate steps to allow voters to cast their ballots in a timely matter, yada yada yada, but let's skip down. We strongly oppose litigation against states exercising their sovereign authority to enact such laws, and those laws have to deal with, securing photo identification and things like that. And what strikes me about that is, so if a state crimes, in other words, actively denies, ballot access to, I don't know, Black and brown people. And there's evidence of that. This language says, oh, we oppose any litigation, to challenge those actions. How should we be reading? Am I just being too narrow in my reading here, or is there a broader approach that they're trying to achieve here?
CARUSONE: No. I mean, that's one of the shots across the bow that's in the plan. You know, part of the plan is to sort of use the specter of immediate mass arrests, especially against local officials in the first hundred days of a new administration to sort of affect their behavior before the election even happens. And you pinpointed one of the examples, which is you get local officials, you get inside their head. You say, yeah, you know, I may not want to take certain action or I may enforce other things because I don't — I want to avoid being one of the first people in the barrel.
And that's something that they have planned and not only put in the document, but then start to escalate in terms of their communications as they got into October. So we're a little ahead here even talking about it, but part of the strategy behind this was to lay the framework and the legal argument around the Department of Justice to pursue both — and punish individuals that tried to sue for access and try to get more access and then simultaneously go after local officials for a whole range of things, including trying to ensure that the most people voted. And they would describe a lot of those things as voter fraud. And one of the things that they've argued via the DOJ, is that they would use the Department of Justice to crack down on a local official that they saw, and, you know, that who actually helped voting, but who maybe have expanding access to the ballot.