Journalist David Graham says the aim of the creators of the conservative action plan Project 2025 aim is to push the federal government "as far to the right as they can." His new book is The Project.Also, TV critic David Bianculli reviews a new PBS documentary about libraries.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is Project 2025 and its significance?
And he was a big fan of Trump from very early on. He wanted Trump to run for office in 2011 when he was pushing the birther lie. And he finally managed to kick his way into the White House late in the first Trump administration, working in the personnel office.
And then there's Russell Vogt.
Yes. And Vote is kind of the inside man if Dan's is the outsider. Vote came up through Capitol Hill circles working for very conservative, fiscally conservative members of Congress like Phil Graham and Jeb Hensarling. And then he served in the Office of Management and Budget during Trump's first term in office.
And he is the man who I think has thought most about how government works and how to achieve the things they want to do. He's really about the sort of operations and levers of power.
And he sort of openly embraces the notion of Christian nationalism.
That's right. You know, he gave a really interesting interview to Charlie Kirk a couple of years ago, the conservative podcaster. And he said, you know, the left is always saying using these pejorative names for us. But when they say Christian nationalist, you know, I think that's accurate. I'm a Christian and I'm a nationalist. That's not a pejorative for me.
And he thinks that America was founded as a Christian nation and it needs to return to those roots.
You know, a lot of our listeners I'm sure have heard of Project 2025. A lot of people have. And I think it's thought of as a policy document with ideas that they hoped Trump would embrace. And it is that. But it's not just that. It was an organization. I mean the project wasn't just a document. It was an organization with a lot of people.
And part of it was a personnel recruitment and training operation. And I gather that's because a lot of the people running this project, some of them had served in Trump's first term and felt it was not effective because it was undermined by those running the government, both career civil servants and even some political appointees.
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Chapter 2: How did Project 2025 influence Trump's presidency?
Right. So they developed a list of as many as 10,000 people who they thought would be good candidates for working in the second Trump administration. What kind of folks were these?
You know, this is all kinds of people. They wanted people who they said, you know, had run for local school board meetings. They wanted people who had been thrown out of organizations for being too loyal to Trump. They wanted the people who were kind of the rejects, but rejects who had skills and could sort of the raw talent that could be trained to work in the government.
Right. I think Paul Danz used this phrase, people who figured it would be given blood for the movement. That's to say they've paid a price. They've been canceled online or punished in some way for their beliefs. Exactly. Yeah. So they established a lot of training for these folks. And you can see on the website some of the main topics. What did this training consist of?
You know, some of these things are just very basic. Like here is how you deal with public records in the government. Here's what you need to know about public records. Here's what you need to know about the structure of government. It's like schoolhouse rock on a very high level. And some of them are a little bit more specific. All of them are maybe, you know, 30, 60 minutes long, roughly.
So to give people a basic grounding so they weren't coming in and learning how their offices worked only when they got their badge and got their HR training.
These were online videos in the main, right?
Correct. You had to sign up for them. You could register and sign up, and then you'd get a certificate at the end saying that you had completed the training.
Did you get to look at any of these?
I've seen some of them. A lot of them are available online and you can watch them. I mean, some of them are just much more boring than you would expect, which is kind of intriguing.
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