The Chaser Report - Project 2025: What Could A Second Trump Presidency Look Like? | Dr Emma Shortis

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

Dr Emma Shortis, Senior Researcher in the International and Security Affairs Program at The Australian Institute, joins Dom Knight to explain what a second Trump presidency might look like. So what is 'Project 2025', and how does a conservative American think tank plan on destroying "the deep state", plus more! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report. Dom here, Charles is still off making a show. We now know it's called Optics. It's on ABC TV next year. But once again, we've invited someone who actually knows what they're talking about onto the show.

It's Dr Emma Shortus, senior researcher in the International and Security Affairs Program at the Australia Institute. She's a historian and writer and an expert on US politics, who I think has appeared more than once on Planet America in the past. Hello, Emma. Hey, Don, thanks for having me. Great to have you here. Now, the subject today is just as well as getting your reads on what's happening in the US more broadly.

You are one of surely the few people in the world who have read the Heritage Foundation, the American Conservative Think Tank's Project 2025 document. Now, this is the basis of democratic scare campaigns at the moment. And Donald Trump's tried to disassociate himself curiously, from the document. But the big question is, what's in it? And we'll get on to that in just a second. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca.

Okay, so this thing is long, Emma. It's super long. And, you know, I did, once I started reading it, I very much regretted that I admitted to going through the whole thing. Because it is, it is this really weird mix of super radical, far right conservative ideas with this really boring, granular detail about like the lowest level government appointments, the lowest level budget lines. So it's a really kind of disorienting experience to read this, you know, 900 page plus. Manifesto, really. It's called a mandate for leadership, but it's a manifesto, really, for the far-right movement that they're hoping to hand to the next conservative administration is how they describe it. But of course, they mean the next Donald Trump presidency. I guess one of the things that happened last time, if we cast our mind back, it seems like a hundred years ago that Donald Trump took office at the beginning of 2017.

I guess it must have been, gosh, it actually was quite a while ago. He didn't really know how the system worked. All kinds of people were appointed. He had insiders and so on. And there's certainly a perception from Republicans. that the deep state, all the embedded anti-Trump, anti-Republican public service workers, as we'd call it in Australia, managed to put the brakes on. But also to some degree, it was Trump simply not knowing how the system worked, to some degree, not knowing what the powers of the

presidency were and the limits on the presidency, as someone who's quite new to this whole running for office thing back then and probably not someone with a great degree of attention to detail. So many of the things that he tried to do, and I'm sure you can think of a couple, he wasn't actually able to pull off. I mean, building the wall is one that. comes to mind where he just simply couldn't quite manage to get that together. Also the whole ongoing joke of it being infrastructure week every week and not building any infrastructure. But in terms of what Donald Trump wanted to do, he didn't achieve some of his major goals last time around, did he? Yeah, totally. And this mandate for leadership is a response to exactly

that. So, you know, the Muslim ban, the so-called Muslim ban, I think is another example where Trump and his supporters in particular felt like they had been blocked by the Department of Justice and you know, exactly as he said, Don, what they describe as the deep state. And so what the Heritage Foundation is aiming to do with this is, you know, they describe it as dismantling the administrative state. So it means reclassifying potentially tens of thousands of those independent civil servants who, you know, apparently blocked Trump's agenda, firing them and replacing them with vetted Trump loyalists who, you know, are committed to the mission and they use this kind of evangelical language of war and battle. So it's absolutely a response to

those perceptions. But unspoken in that is also the response to the first part of what you said, this idea that the Trump, the first Trump administration was pretty incompetent. You know, it just didn't understand the fundamentals of American power and how to use it, how it functions. And that's part of the reason it failed. And so one of the other pillars of this project 2025 is actually a kind of education program where those, you know, tens of thousands of loyalists that they've recruited through this kind of conservative LinkedIn will go through an education program to understand or to learn really how to use power and particularly how to use bureaucratic power to implement that really kind of astoundingly radical agenda. So it is absolutely learning

the lessons, I think, of the incompetence and the chaos of the first Trump administration. How sweet that there's a civics program. But the kind of mechanisms of power are quite complex in the US. And we know that the system is really quite sclerotic. It's hard to get anything done. Joe Biden has managed to get more bills through perhaps than were expected, but still there are lots of areas where he simply can't do what he wants. Guns comes to mind fairly topically at the moment. So I guess here's the question. How much are they going to be able to do, even if they have this whole program and this whole conservative LinkedIn, which I definitely want to know more about, are they actually going to be able to overcome this situation? Or I suppose, look, if the

way things are looking, maybe the Republicans win the House and the Senate as well. They get all three tiers of government. Maybe they can do some of this stuff. Yeah, well, I mean, I think looking at the Republican National Convention just this week, they do seem pretty confident that they'll get the Senate at least. There's been a big focus on, you know, those who are campaigning for those close Senate seats. So I think they're pretty confident now that they might be able to get at least the Senate. I think, you know, the conservative LinkedIn and the recruitment, I think, is exactly as you said, Dom, to overcome the sclerotic state to kind of clear the decks and put in these loyalists who will begin the work of dismantling regulation of kind of

undoing government roles in a number of things, you know, in the Department of State, but also in the Department of Justice, which is a big focus. I think, you know, predicting how effective they would actually be is quite difficult because they are being recruited, you know, not necessarily for their expertise in subject areas, but for their loyalty specifically, not just to the presidency, but to Donald Trump specifically. So, you know, the effectiveness of that is difficult to predict. But, you know, just looking at the mandate for leadership in particular, And again, the kind of granular detail that it goes into suggests that there is a kind of deep knowledge of American power and how it functions and how to use it that sits behind all of

this. And I think one that will kind of coexist with a Trump presidency because, you know, Trump doesn't care about like the finer details of the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Education. He can ignore that and, you know, they can, this, the movement behind him can just kind of get to work. And I think if you combine that with potentially full control of Congress and importantly, the Supreme Court as well, you have the recipe at least for really the effective implementation of minority rule. Yeah, Trump plus technocrats is a very different version of Donald Trump than what we saw before. I mean, I guess there are normally transition plans

that begin happening around about now where they figure out what to do. But it sounds as though he's just going to outsource this potentially to the Heritage Foundation. Now, as I mentioned, denied any involvement with this. We can get to how plausible that seems. But let's talk more about the kind of things that they want to do. Now, you've written about this for the conversation website, by the way, and the article's been doing the rounds big time. You wrote it back in April, but everyone's looking at it now that Project 25 is in the news again. And there are lots of things that they just want to pull out of completely. I mean, the Federal Reserve, for instance, the system for managing money they have a particular problem with. What's their problem with central banks?

Yeah, so this is, I think, one of the really interesting things about the project more broadly is that is this attempt to unify some pretty disparate streams of politics in the United States. So you have kind of what we might call more traditional conservatives and then, you know, the extreme far right. And then there's this kind of libertarian streak in there as well, which does, of course, support, you know, much of Trump's agenda, particularly, you know, dismantling the deep state. But the financial regulation stuff is really interesting because there is this chapter that recommends the dismantling of the Federal Reserve, which is like a libertarian favorite to end the Fed, right? And it is about kind of government overreach and

a free market and kind of having, I guess, freedom of choice is how libertarians would describe it. But it is a pretty wild thing to contemplate, you know, the dismantling of the Federal Reserve in the most important influential economy in the world alongside, you know, a withdrawal or dismantling of the global institutions of financial regulations. Like, I think even an attention, to do that, and I don't think they would necessarily go that far. I think there would probably be, there would be a kind of ideological war over this within the movement. It's not unified about this at all. But even an attempt to do that would be incredibly destabilizing, you know, which is not to say that the American economy or American economic ideology has a particularly

good influence on the world, but dismantling that kind of quickly and with zero regard for the international consequences as well is a pretty scary prospect. Yeah, I mean, we've seen in the past, essentially, the Federal Reserve chair, you know, sneezes or issues really cryptic language. And global markets can really tank or go gangbusters just based on the slightest hint of what the Fed might be planning to do. Yeah. I can't even imagine that alongside 100% tariffs on all Chinese imports into the United States as well. Well, that was one of Joe Biden's most coherent arguments in the debate was the notion that tariffs would make things more expensive, not cheaper. But yeah, the notion of completely dismantling the Fed.

along with potentially the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, I think both of which America, certainly largely, if not almost entirely funds, what happens then? Can we just print our own money? Does money not mean anything anymore? I mean, what kind of world would that even be? Well, luckily I'm not an economist, so I think it's unknowable. It's such uncharted warriors. I think it is, it is unknowable because, you know,

predicting the response of other economies, I think is really difficult, predicting the flow-on effects is also really difficult. Because domestically, you're also talking about, you know, deregulating the banking system in the United States and, you know, making it so that sort of bank, people with bank accounts don't have insurance or safety nets. And what does that mean in terms of, you know, the financial system internally? What are the repercussions of that internationally? So all the changes after the GFC, all these kind of Obama regulations to tighten banking. I mean, anyone can start a bank at this point. I mean, sounds exciting. I wouldn't mind

starting a bank in the US. And it is, I mean, some of the chapter, it is quite, you know, even the tone is quite excited that, you know, we can have this kind of free system where people have all this choice and, you know, and bad behaviour will be kind of weeded out by the invisible hand of the market. It is this such an interesting mix of kind of old school capitalism with a libertarian bent, you know, alongside some like extraordinary or some prescriptions for extraordinary regulation of other areas of social life. So it is this real kind of hodgepodge effort to unify this movement behind a Trump administration, again, in the way that particularly the Heritage Foundation just feels didn't happen the first time around.

In a moment, we'll look at what this means for the environment as well. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. The Chaser Report, news you know you can't trust.

So from memory, one of the things that the Trump administration, the first time around, did pretty successfully actually was in terms of the EPA. I can't now remember. A long time ago, I wrote a book about Donald Trump and some of the stranger aspects of his past. and also his time in office, I think about two years in also, it was called Trumpedia. And I did a lot of research into things like the Trump Taj Mahal, which had literal white elephants out the front before it went bankrupt.

But I do remember that the EPA was one of the places where Trumpism really tried. And there were lots of conflicts with the kind of loyalists there. I remember whoever the secretary was that he pointed to his name, I can't recall, had put in some sort of secret silent room where he could make calls back to the White House because he didn't trust anyone. Who was the secretary of the environment? Is it Pruitt? Scott Pruitt or something? Yeah. No, it's it's left me. It was it. You're right, it was a hundred years ago.

But the focus on the EPA is still there. They still hate it with that real passion. Yeah, Scott Pruitt was the guy. And we do know, one of the few coherent, I guess, policy prescriptions we've heard from Donald Trump, along with the concept of being a dictator on day one. But part of the point of that was drill baby drill. He loves that line. Yeah, he loves it. And I think that really got kind of missed in that the completely. reasonable outrage in this idea that he would be a dictator. But, you know, one of his first stated reasons for being a dictator was to open national monuments, national parks, to oil drilling in particular. And that is all through Project 2025, this idea not just of kind of dismantling the Biden administration's achievements when it comes to climate change, particularly the

inflation reduction act, but going after again, the EPA dismantling the national oceanic and atmospheric administration, which is the, I guess, the research basis for heats of climate science and is used globally and privatising weather surfers. Yeah, we just wouldn't know how much climate change there was if this happened. All that data would simply not be collected anymore. So this is stuff with absolute global implications. The global economy, with the Fed and so on, it's simply not collecting environmental data and we're drilling in national parks.

So, yeah, the attempt to try and reduce fossil fuel. use, I mean, that was essentially go out the window. Yeah, it's done and quite deliberately so. You know, it's hard, again, it's hard to predict and do the modelling, but some have suggested that just the plans to reduce regulation would result in an increase in emissions equivalent to Japan and the European Union's emissions combined. So it kind of puts that, you know, keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees well out the window before you even consider the plans to dramatically increase fossil fuel use and extraction, which sit in this program. And it's really connected to a kind of international belligerence that runs through the whole document as well, because

they're not just talking about increasing oil production. They're also calling for what they call full spectrum energy dominance. So it's a way of a kind of attacking again or reinforcing, I suppose, American primacy, particularly with regards to China. So it's, it's kind of this unified global agenda of American belligerence and the kind of aggressive use of American power across, you know, all facets that are open to the United States, not just militarily, but in terms of climate as well. Okay. And that's one area where Donald Trump might not actually agree with the Heritage Foundation,

because Donald Trump is pretty reluctant about wars or indeed doing anything outside the borders of the US that isn't potentially building golf courses. He's just not interested in, and I should say, more Trump-branded hotels. He's very anti-American troops going overseas. He's very anti-partnerships. He's anti-NATO and so on. And so it sounds as though the Heritage Foundation hawks have been into this one. So is it possible that perhaps this bit at least might not happen if he's wanting to increase,

if they're wanting to increase the projection of American force around the world? Or is there a way that Trump might get on board? So this is the bit, Don, that I'm actually genuinely not sure about because there is that kind of anti-war streak in Trump and Trumpism. But I'm not sure, to be honest, if it's even anti-war. It's absolutely anti-putting American troops specifically at risk. But it's not anti the kind of belligerent use of American power to enforce, you know, American primacy.

And you can see that in the documents because it's super, they are super hawkish, particularly on China. They see China as an existential threat that needs to be counted by a dramatic increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. They also talk about increasing U.S. troop numbers by 40,000. moving them out of Europe and into East Asia. So there absolutely is a kind of belligerence there. And when it comes to Trump specifically, you know, I think he is anti-risk. He's anti-putting American troops at risk. But I don't think he's anti-violence. You know, if we go back to the

first Trump administration, he's really happy to threaten to bomb other places specifically. You know, he talks about his big red button and how it works better than anybody else's. And I think he could be convinced by these Heritage Foundation hawks if he was convinced that, you know, he would win. Like, I think it's not that Trump doesn't like war. It's that he doesn't like losing. And if he thought he could win, then the calculation would be very different. Well, he doesn't lose, Emerald, to be clear, what happens is he just challenges the premise

of the terms on which he lost. And when you're talking about the Big Bread Button, I assume you're talking about the nuclear arsenal, not the one that brings a Diet Coke on a silver service tray instantly. That'll be reinstalled, I guess, if he, he was. wins again. But I mean, this is really quite extraordinary. I mean, this is a world-changing moment. And one of the things you've written about in the conversation is that you quote the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin D. Roberts, is saying that the aim here is to defeat the anti-American left at home and abroad. And I guess this also potentially, not only does it end a lot

of global efforts, as we've been discussing, but potentially changes the nature of American democracy on an ongoing basis, right? I mean, this is looking far beyond, isn't it? A four-year second Trump term. Yeah, it absolutely is. And I think it's pretty wild to see, you know, some Democrats backgrounding about how they're now willing to kind of take the, take the L and assume a Trump presidency is coming again and, you know, that they'll regroup for 2028 because so much of these plans. And, you know, it's all written down. Like, they're not hiding it is about dismantling the institutions of American democracy. You know, it's about weaponizing the Department of Justice against anybody, really, that Trump sees as his enemy.

you know, using it for retribution, dismantling, you know, the state and also, you know, really heavily regulating American social life. And I think you put that alongside those efforts to institute minority rule. You put them alongside that recent Supreme Court decision around, you know, the president of the United States having total immunity for official acts. Yeah. And you have really a recipe, I think, for authoritarianism. And like without wanting to get into, you know, what that does to American credibility abroad and, you know, whether it emboldens anti-democrats internationally because, you know, that's such a kind of American conceit. It does, of course, have international repercussions, you know, especially for Australia.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, how could it not? It's also, we did an episode about the Supreme Court, which was fairly high on the humour rather than the detail. But I do remember the aspect of that that was particularly extraordinary was that the, not only, you know, would Richard Nixon have absolutely been able to do what he did. The idea that when the American president does it, that makes it legal, is now settled doctrine from the Supreme Court. But the notion that the president should just sick the Justice Department on to whoever they want, the notion of trying to have someone independent in the role the way Biden tried

with Merrick Garland at arm's reach, the Supreme Court was very clear that they expect the president to go after whoever they want to and simply use the Justice Department as essentially a personal police force, almost. I'm not exaggerating, and I'm over that language was in the Supreme Court judgment. Yeah, no, I don't think you're exaggerating at all. That would absolutely be the situation where you have this executive branch with extremely concentrated power. And that, again, that's kind of been a generational project of the far right in the United

States that's now being realized. And, you know, when you consider kind of who you're dealing with and that at multiple points in the first Trump administration, you know, he tried to do things just like that. You know, he asked his advisors why, you know, they couldn't just shoot, the military couldn't just shoot protesters in the legs. And that kind of act, which would be presumably an official act, becomes something that he can do and, you know, that he's immune from criminal prosecution for. So it is, you know, you mentioned earlier about the scare campaign around Project 2025. But, you know, the reason that it's an effective scare campaign is because it's actually pretty scary.

So it's extreme. Let's look finally, though, at that, Emma, the comments that Donald Trump's made, distancing himself from this whole agenda saying he just doesn't understand, doesn't know what's in it. I mean, it's entirely plausible. He hasn't engaged with any of the content at any point and doesn't really know what it says. It doesn't seem like his kind of thing, a 900 page detailed document about how to exercise policy. But if he hires a chief of staff who's on board with this program, and what stop him from implementing any of it, even if he's not interested in it? Yeah, I think that's exactly the point, you know, and I think you're right. We know he doesn't read things. So of course he hasn't read it. But he has this movement now behind him and this

structure behind him that's committed to implementing it. And there's lots of stuff in there that is entirely aligned with things he likes. And I think particularly, you know, you can see there's there's so many people who are in the first Trump administration or who are associated with Trump land who are playing big roles in Project 2025. You know, they've authored chapters. They're kind of running the project. And I think a really big tell is that he's picked J.D. Van, as his vice presidential candidate because Vance is really close to the Heritage Foundation and the president, Kevin Roberts, in particular. And Vance is very much across the detail.

You know, he is a really clever political operator who is committed to this agenda. And I think, you know, in all likelihood, Trump will just let them do it, you know, as long as they're not messing stuff up for him or taking attention away from him and he can kind of, you know, get on with his thing. I think he'll be very happy for them to just kind of be let loose. Be let loose is what we're seeing. And I mean, look, at this point in the campaign, it is hard to see how the Democrats win from here.

I mean, I know there's months to go. And goodness knows there are an awful lot of twists in the tale. So we're recording this late on Thursday morning. The news has just come through that Joe Biden has contracted COVID-19. Who knows what state he'll be in by the time? You actually hear this episode. And by the way, we're going to have an episode with David Smith on the feed, probably tomorrow, Saturday or maybe Sunday,

wrapping up the RNC and reacting to Donald Trump's speech. So look out for more US politics in the feed. But at the point where we're recording this, Emma, it's hard to see anything going Joe Biden's way. Not only the debate, not only his attempts to try and put the campaign back together, which haven't really worked, but his health is now seriously in danger. You'll have to slow down potentially and make sure he gets over COVID-19. So his attempt to go running around the country and try and reassure everyone that he's

still got it, they're not going to work either. Whereas Donald Trump, despite the terrible shooting, he's been on stage this week in Milwaukee, almost in a victory lap before the victory, it seems so likely at this stage. But Emma, yeah, it does seem, doesn't it, that the snowball is gathering momentum. And a second Trump term would be, it seems, unlike the first one in terms of actually getting things done and far more impactful potentially than the Biden administration has been simply in terms of implementing an agenda. Yeah, absolutely, especially if they win control of Congress. And as we were saying, Dom, you know, they seem now pretty confident that they will be

able to do that, that they'll have the Senate and potentially keep the House as well. The RNC so far, you know, where day three, I think, has been really a victory lap. And that is because, you know, Biden is in so much trouble, you know, at the time we're recording, as he said, he's been, the White House announced that he has COVID. but there's also news that Adam Schiff, a really high-profile Democrat, who's running for the Senate, he's basically lost Schiff, and he's also lost Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader. Oh, I hadn't seen that.

There are reports that he's had a meeting with Schumer in which Schumer told him quite forcefully to step aside. And, you know, these guys aren't political risk takers. So I think that's a pretty strong indication that that snowball is getting more and more out of control for Biden. And that's just the reality of it. You know, he can't, he can't prove he's not too old because he is too old. You know, there's nothing to be said or done that can really change that. And I think, you know, I'm sure you've talked about this a lot, but the depth of that betrayal, you know, when he himself and Biden himself has framed this

election as a battle for the soul of America, you know, is really, the depth of the betrayal is pretty astounding. I mean, a lot of people were saying for the past year or two that there was a bit of a conspiracy afforded and that Biden was far worse than people thought. And at the time, he thought, well, this, there's a little bit of ages in there. They've done quite a lot of stuff. They've passed a lot of legislation. But look, every time he goes to give a speech in his presidential address to the nation after Trump's shooting, I watched all of. And I mean, it was okay. There were a few moments where he flubbed the lines and called him, call him the former Trump and talked about, what did he say instead of ballot boxes? It was battle boxes. That's right. So the wheels of, I mean,

we know he has a stutter as well, and it's often made gaffs in the past. But his speeches don't inspire confidence. And at the same time, you've got over on the other side, as we've been saying, really, a fairly triumphant week in Milwaukee. So anyway, we now know a bit more about what would probably happen in his second Trump term, which at this stage seems enormously likely. Who knows what twists may come ahead in the rest of this election, or indeed by the time this comes out on the feed. But Emma, really appreciate A, not having to read the 900-page Heritage Foundation plan, but also just getting a sense from you of the extreme detail that's been gone into to try and essentially make a lot of conservative dreams come true.

Donald Trump got rid of Roe v. Wade effectively, and that's had wide-reaching repercussions. That sort of transformation is potentially a foot for just about all aspects of life in America if Donald Trump wins, Emma. Yeah, that's right. You know, we didn't even get into the fact that early in the document it says the overturning of Roe v. Wade is just the start. Right. So it's a pretty, it is a pretty wild prescription.

And I don't, I don't recommend reading the whole thing. Well, we might have to. We might be forced to. Who knows, in the new world. This may be some sort of a second constitution. Who knows as things go forward? Emma, thank you very much for joining us. It's been a little chilling in places, but really fascinating.

And goodness, I can't keep my eyes away from this election. It's just utterly grouping. It is. Cheers, John. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks, Emma. our gears from ride we're part

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